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CAPTAIN 
JOHN SMITH 




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From portrait given in his own works 



CAPTAIN 
JOHN SMITH 



BY 



TUDOR JENKS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1904 



j 2^"?^ ^ |UBnABv"«f 0ON8RESS 

Two Oonles Re^teived 

SEP 17 1904 
Oooyrtrht Entry 

loUMSS CU XXo. Na 

CePY B 



Copyright, 1904, by 
The Century Co. 



Published October, igo4 



The DEVlNNE PRESS 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I His Boyhood and First Journey .... 3 
II Smith as Hermit, Traveler, and Sailor . . 16 

III Smith's Cruise with Captain La Roche — 

He Enlists against the Turks . . . . 25 

IV His Further Experiences in Warring against 

the Infidels :^6 

V Captain Smith's Three Combats against 

Turkish Champions 47 

VI The Destruction of the Christian Army, 

and Smith's Captivity 58 

VII Smith's Slavery to the Turks, and his Escape 69 

viii His Further Adventures in Europe and 

Africa— A Sea-Fight 78 

IX Smith Joins Gosnold's Expedition, and Makes 

THE Voyage to Virginia 86 

x First Experiences in Virginia — Exploring 

THE James River ......... 97 

XI Failure of the Food Supply — Attempts to 

Trade with the Indians 113 

XII Captain Smith is Captured by the Indians . 124 

V 



VI CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII Smith's Captivity— He is Taken before Pow- 

hatan 145 

XIV The Rescue of Captain Smith by Pocahontas 157 

XV The Coming of Newport from England — 

Powhatan AS A Trader 170 

XVI Further Explanations of the Coast and 

Harbors— Smith Takes the Presidency . 185 

XVII How Captain Smith Fought against Famine, 
Ignorance, Treachery, and Indians, to 
Preserve the Colony — His Departure, 
AND THE " Starving Time " 206 

xviii The Settlers after Smith's Departure . .225 

XIX His Last Enterprise — Smith as a Writer — 

Conclusion 239 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Portrait of Captain John Smith Frontispu 



lece 



PAGE 



Captain John Smith's Coat-of-Arms 2 

By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co. 

Signahng by means of Ughts, during the war against 

the Turks 3^ ^ 

Smith as a slave is led before the Turkish Bashaw . . 65 

George Percy 93 

Indian houses of this period 99 

The capture of Captain Smith in the marsh . . . . 135 

Pocahontas saves the life of Captain Smith . . . . 161 

Old Church Tower, Jamestown 211 

Section of the map of Virginia 229 

Pocahontas ^4^ 



INTRODUCTION 

The beginning of the United States, the very 
foundation of our great Enghsh-speaking nation, 
was laid in Virginia at Jamestown. Here was 
the first community that actually made its home 
within our land, and proved to the world that 
America might grow into a nation. 

The Virginian settlement was made only after 
many efforts — after more than one disastrous 
failure, and at the cost of many lives. It had to 
fight against famine, pestilence, and enemies, and 
in its fight it had many leaders. One by one 
these were tried and found wanting, until the 
rise to power of Captain John Smith, who proved 
victorious against every foe. 

What he was and how he had succeeded we 
shall see in reading his life. Many have told 
his story, and each tells it in a different way, as is 



INTRODUCTION 



right. Unless each writer tried to give his own 
view, we might all rest satisfied to read Captain 
Smith's own story. But that is not enough. 
When Smith wrote, he was writing to the men 
of his own day. They knew the surroundings, 
and did not need to be told many things that we 
must learn if we would understand why the sub- 
jects of Queen Elizabeth felt as they did about 
America, about Spain and Holland— if we would 
learn what they hoped and what they feared. 

The lives of Captain Smith, therefore, all add 
much to the story as told by the brave sailor, sol- 
dier, and author himself. It would seem, how- 
ever, that there is room for another telling of 
his career— one in which, taking Smith's own 
book as the basis, as all must do, nothing is added 
without giving the reader warning, nothing is 
taken away without explaining why it is omitted; 
an account made clear and plain in its language, 
but accurate in its facts and told without an at- 
tempt to paint Smith either white or black. 

The reading of his own story gives a certain 
impression of the man to each reader, and that 



INTRODUCTION XI 

impression must color a writer's account of him; 
but, nevertheless, it is possible to refrain from 
purposely making him either better or worse. 

John Smith certainly was not simply a self- 
sacrificing hero who offered his life for the fu- 
ture of his race and his fatherland, and neither 
was he a self-seeking adventurer whose only mo- 
tive was his own fortune or his own fame. He 
was a plucky, clear-sighted, resourceful English- 
man; an able soldier, a brave man, a man whose 
strength of will, courage, and belief in America's 
future saved the Virginian colony from ruin, 
and thus laid truly and firmly the foundation- 
stone upon which has been erected the great 
Republic whose eighty millions of people may 
say, in the brave words of the haughty German 
chancellor: ''We fear God; we fear naught 
else." 



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 




CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S COAT-OF-ARMS 



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

CHAPTER I 

HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY 

IN the introduction to his own account of his ad- 
ventures John Smith says that some of his 
critics complained that he wrote too much about 
his own deeds— as he put it, " Envie hath taxed 
me to have writ too much; and done too Httle "; 
but in our day we find his story too short and too 
sHght. He leaves out so much we should like to 
know, and puts into a few short words the events 
of years. Of his boyhood, especially, he tells little. 
As to the date of his birth, he gives only the year, 
1579. This may mean our year 1580, since his 
baptism was in January, and they began each 
year with March. He records the name of his 
native town, Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and 
adds only that he was a scholar in two free schools 
at Alford and at Louth. Except for a single sen- 



4 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

tence recording his descent from the Smiths of 
Crudley (sometimes spelled Curdley or Cuardley) 
in Lancashire and the Rickands (or Rickards) of 
Yorkshire, that is all he tells us of the first 
thirteen years of his life. All that others have 
added relating to his own doings is pure inven- 
tion. 

By piecing together other bits of knowledge 
about him we can make guesses, that may be 
right, about his boyhood. We know that his na- 
tive town was in the flat lands, a marshy and 
sometimes foggy district within walking distance 
of the sea-coast; that it was an ancient place — 
possibly mentioned by the Roman Emperor Anto- 
ninus as '' Margidunum,'' and that shepherds and 
farmers thereabouts often found Roman coins in 
its soil; that his father was a farmer fairly pros- 
perous, and an owner of horses; that there were 
in the family another boy, Francis, younger than 
John, and also a still younger sister, Alice. 

Then, by consulting books of history, we can 
know what was going on during his boyhood, and 
the general state of England and the rest of the 
world at that time, and thus make another guess 
or two about the talk little John Smith probably 
heard among his friends and neighbors. We may 



HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY 5 

be sure that there was not a bright boy in England 
at the time who had not heard the story of King 
PhiHp of Spain and his great Armada, which, as 
is so stirringly told in Kingsley's '' Westward 
Ho!" was met and defeated in the year 1588, 
when John Smith was eight— just old enough to 
have an idea of what that fight meant to his na- 
tive land. 

Why could n't he have written us what rejoi- 
cings he saw? Why could n't he have told us of 
the fright when the ready-laid beacons of warn- 
ings were set aflame, and of the joy over the other 
bonfires that betokened victory? We learn from 
him only that he was determined to go to sea, and 
from this may argue that he knew of the world- 
wide exploits of Drake, of Hawkins, of Frobisher, 
of Howard, and all the commanders who were 
winning from Spain the empire of the sea, and 
thereby the empire of the world, for the English 

race. 

Indeed, the wonderful deeds of these sailors and 
of the soldiers of the '' tight little island " have 
made it hard to write books that shall interest 
their descendants. Modern boys live in a time so 
wonderful that they have become a little indiffer- 
ent to marvels. They have learned to expect them 



6 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

every few days. So it is not strange that their 
elders complain of a lack of curiosity, that they 
find in them less of the faculty of wonder that 
made their grandfathers find in books of travel 
and adventure a charm they cannot quite under- 
stand. 

When John Smith was a small boy in Lincoln- 
shire, the world was a different place. His world 
was small, and news from outside came rarely and 
traveled slowly. When it came, it came in a dull 
and unsatisfactory form— without much detail, 
and with few pictures, and those roughly drawn 
from crude sketches or mere descriptions: such 
pictures as are reprinted here from Captain 
Smith's story of his own adventures. Wonder- 
fully truthful in some things, in others they were 
absurd. 

In order that one may learn to look at the world 
with the eyes of the Lincolnshire boy of the six- 
teenth century, one must imagine all railroads to 
vanish, all the steam-vessels to be removed from 
the sea, all telegraph wires, electric lights, tele- 
phones, autonjobiles, bicycles, even newspapers— 
all the modern inventions we know so well— to 
be as if they were never to exist. There must be 
almost no coaches in the streets— the first were 



HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY 7 

made in England the year John Smith was born ; 
the roads are rough, full of pitfalls and unfin- 
ished; the country places often wild and neglected. 
Towns and cities must shrink to a fraction of 
their present size, and the villages become mere 
hamlets. One must suppress all but the scantiest 
remnant of the books that now bring knowledge 
to every home, and must imagine the greater 
part of the globe to be veiled in mystery. In lit- 
erature, England could claim among distin- 
guished poets only Gower, Chaucer, Sidney, 
Spenser, Marlowe, — for Shakspere was just at 
his beginning; in science. Friar Bacon, William 
Gilbert, and Francis Bacon; in art, no one of 
great importance. 

It would be easy to fill pages with notes of the 
diiTerences between the sixteenth century and the 
twentieth ; but let the hint be sufficient to remind 
us that the England of that day bore little like- 
ness to the England of our times, and that John 
Smith could not have imagined anything at all 
resembling the world we know. 

Yet we can imagine certain likenesses with our 
own times. We know that the boys upon the 
farms of those past days enjoyed much the same 
pastimes as boys of to-day : they ran races, swam 



8 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

in the rivers, fished, rode the horses, and tended 
the cattle. They played ball, jackstones, odd or 
even, checkers, backgammon, chess. They built 
bonfires, played soldiers, went to school, or 
" played hooky,'' and were just plain boys after 
all; and John Smith undoubtedly was much like 
the rest, so far as the neighbors could see. 

But he was not an ordinary boy, and he wished 
to be more than an ordinary man. He resolved 
to become a sailor, to see something of the won- 
ders of which he heard hints in the ballads and 
the rude books of the time. There was a wonder- 
ful new land far in the Western seas, a land from 
which the Spaniards were bringing ship-loads of 
gold and treasure— the wealth that made them 
able to build and fit out the great galleons of the 
Armada. There were, to the eastward, the lands 
of the great nations of Europe, and beyond these 
the fierce Turks, and the roving Muscovites, mar- 
velous Cathay and the golden Indies. Southward 
lay Africa, full of the wonders Mandeville had 
described, — wonders incredible yet fascinating, — 
and northward was the region where Frobisher 
hoped to find the northwest passage to the spice- 
countries, and where Davis was seeking for 
treasure and finding endless ice-floes. 



HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY 9 

The whole world of salt water was open to the 
English sailors; and John Smith meant to see 
something of its glories. No wonder the little fel- 
low, full of enterprise, as we know he must have 
been, sold all he had, — his books and satchel, — so 
that he could make his way to the sea-coast and 
begin his career. A few school-books and a 
satchel in exchange for a world of new lands, 
new scenes, adventure, and possibly fame and 
wealth! — what ambitious boy of thirteen would 
have hesitated to make the bargain? To whom 
they were sold, and whether the boy made a wise 
or foolish exchange, Smith does not tell us, nor 
is it important. 

But in dreaming their dreams and making their 
plans, small boys do not reckon upon the accidents 
of life. George Smith, John's father, fell sick 
and died. His will being dated March 30, 1596, 
his death took place somewhere about that time, 
and he was buried in the following April. To his 
elder son he left some property, including seven 
acres of pasture land ; but John did not think him- 
self capable of managing or caring for it, where- 
fore he '' little regarded it." The mother was 
dead also, and John's guardians, according to his 
own remark, were more particular about the care 



lO CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

of his estate than of his future, and so he had 
'' Hberty enough, though no means, to get beyond 
the sea." 

The next information he gives us says that he 
was bound an apprentice to '' Thomas Sendall of 
Linney [Lynn], the greatest merchant of those 
parts," when he was about fifteen years old; but 
there is some blunder about the date, possibly, for 
apparently this was before his father's death in 
1596, and yet the guardians of his estate are 
spoken of before this, as neglecting him. Still, it 
is of little importance when the apprenticeship 
began, for it ended almost at once. Some writers 
of Smith's life have taken it for granted that 
John ran away; but there is no hint of such a 
thing. The merchant apparently let John alone, 
and John let him alone. All that Smith says is in 
these words : . . . " but because he [Sendall] would 
not presently send him [Smith] to sea, he 
[Smith] never saw his master in eight years 
after." It would seem that Smith as an appren- 
tice ashore was not worth his salt, for if he had 
not kept the terms of his agreement, Sendall, 
under the laws of the day, might easily have had 
him severely punished and forced to return to his 
work until the apprenticeship expired. 



HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY II 

Again expressing himself so vaguely that we 
cannot fix the date, Smith tells us that he '' at 
last found means to attend Master Peregrine 
Barty into France." 

Peregrine Barty was the second son of the no- 
bleman from whom the Smiths held their farm — 
Lord Willoughby, a worthy and distinguished 
soldier, and one to w^hom John's father had left 
his best two-year colt, as a token of esteem, at 
the same time charging and commanding John 
to honor and love Lord Willoughby during /his 
life. We can only guess in what capacity young 
Smith went with Peregrine Barty, then a boy 
four years younger than himself; but it would 
seem that he was a sort of page or attendant. At 
all events, we may believe that the party set out 
from London, for Smith upon leaving that city 
applied to his guardians for money, and received 
ten shillings — worth at that time as much as ten 
or twelve dollars now— out of his own property. 
At another place in Smith's writings, in giving 
the prices of things needed by colonists, a suit of 
frieze (cloth) is reckoned at ten shillings, which 
gives us a measure of value. Smith considered 
his guardians' gift stingy, for he says, " such oft 
is the share of fatherless children," and consid- 



12 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

ered that it was given '' to be rid of him." Cer- 
tainly it does not seem generous. 

He stayed at Orleans in France for a month or 
six weeks, being kindly treated; but, his '' service 
being needless," he was sent back to his friends, 
with money to pay his way to England. No doubt 
this was proper enough, for Smith considered 
that he had reason to be grateful. 

But there was nothing to attach him to his na- 
tive land, and he visited Paris, ever upon the 
lookout for an adventurous career. Of his life 
in that city he says nothing except that he made 
friends with a Scotchman named David Hume, 
and allowed him " some use of his purse." In 
return, the Scotchman gave Smith letters to 
friends in Scotland, recommending the young 
Englishman to King James, who was to be the 
successor of Queen Elizabeth. Here again some 
writers of Smith's life have spoken slightingly or 
sneeringly of Hume as an imposer upon his 
friend's good nature, and of Smith as a dupe. 
But it will be seen later that the letters proved use- 
ful to some extent, and we have no reason to think 
Smith was defrauded or deceived, or that Hume 
used much of Smith's small store of cash. 

From Paris the young adventurer went to 



HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY 1 3 

Rouen, and there found himself short of funds. 
It will be remembered that, so far as we know, 
he had in addition to the ten shillings from his 
guardians only the money to pay his way to Eng- 
land, and that with these resources he had gone 
to Paris, aided Hume, and then traveled to Rouen 
— the larger part of the journey homeward. 
From Rouen he continued down the Seine to its 
mouth, to Havre-de-Grace, and there, as he tells 
us, '' began to learn the life of a soldier." He 
was then about sixteen years old. 

It was now near the end of the year 1596, and 
the King of France, who had been waging civil 
war, — the famous Henry of Navarre, he of the 
" white plume " made famous by Macaulay's 
" Battle of Ivry,"— had succeeded in restoring 
peace to the kingdom. This was no doubt a bless- 
ing heartily welcomed by those of his subjects 
who had managed to keep out of the almost con- 
stant battles and skirmishes that had lasted for 
an entire generation ; but it threw out of employ- 
ment the stout soldiers of fortune of all nations 
to whom war was a business and peace was a dull 
trade. These soldiers at once took their way to 
the nearest land where there was a good market 
for stout arms and tried weapons. Probably it 



14 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

was with a leader of men of this sort that the 
young EngHsh adventurer enHsted; at all events, 
he says " he went with Captain Joseph Duxbury 
into the Low Countries," and served three or four 
years in fighting the Spaniards on behalf of the 
sturdy Dutch, for we may assume from his name 
that Duxbury was English, and therefore en- 
gaged on the side of Holland against Spain. 

We do not know why Smith abandoned this 
service, but it may be because the Dutch com- 
mander. Prince Maurice of Orange, about this 
time carried the war into Germany; and Smith 
and his commander may not have cared to follow 
the Dutch out of their own country. We are told 
only that Smith went next to Scotland, intending 
to make use of the letters given him in Paris by 
Hume about four years before, which strikes a 
modern reader as being a long interval between 
receiving and using letters of recommendation. 
If the letters had proved entirely worthless, it 
would not seem quite fair to hold their writer re- 
sponsible after four years ! 

He set sail from " Ancusan,'' identified by mod- 
ern writers with Enkhuizen, on the Zuyder Zee, 
some twenty miles north of Amsterdam, mean- 
ing to land at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, only a 



HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY 1 5 

mile and a half from that city, and then sur- 
rounded by a strong wall. But he was ship- 
wrecked and lay sick for a while in the Holy Isle, 
a few miles south of Berwick, and after his recov- 
ery went into Scotland. He was kindly enter- 
tained by the " honest Scots " at Ripweth and 
Broxmouth, — the latter town being on the coast 
near Dunbar, — but finding " neither money nor 
means to make him a courtier," he returned to his 
home in Willoughby. Although the letters from 
David Hume had secured for the young wanderer 
only a kind reception, the Humes seem to have 
been people of consequence in that part of Scot- 
land, for King James, in 15 15, only eighty years 
before, had made George Hume Earl of Dunbar; 
and the earls of Hume owned Dunglass, on the 
sea-coast not far away, as is recorded in Cam- 
den's '' Britannia." 



CHAPTER II 

SMITH AS HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 

WHEN Smith had come back to his native 
town he soon found himself " glutted 
with too much company." He was not yet twenty 
years old, and had seen enough of the world to be 
an object of interest to the country people of the 
neighborhood. Perhaps he had too many ques- 
tions put to him about his adventures in France, 
Holland, and Scotland; certainly he preferred to 
be left in peace, for he *' retired himself into a 
little woody pasture, a good way from any town," 
and surrounded by deep woods. Here beside a 
brook he built himself a shelter of boughs, and 
remained there, sleeping in his clothes. For books 
he studied Machiavelli's " Art of War," and 
" The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius." The 
" Art of War " had been written in 1520, about 
eighty years before that time, and was a hand- 
book upon the use of troops and a discussion of 

16 



HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 1/ 

the value of fortresses, and so on ; and the second 
book, a volume of pure philosophy, is too well 
known to need description. Certainly neither 
is the sort of book that would have been chosen 
by a heedless, thoughtless, adventurous young 
fellow who longed only to exchange a life of 
farming ashore for the wandering career of a 
soldier and sailor. 

Of his life in the woods Smith tells us only that 
he exercised by tilting at a ring, and hints that he 
hunted deer, and was supplied with what he 
needed by a serving-man. 

But his friends at home thought this hermit- 
life a mistake, and they requested an Italian gen- 
tleman in the service of the Earl of Lincoln to go 
into the woods, gain young Smith's friendship, 
and persuade him to abandon his solitude. This 
was easily done, and Smith went with him to stay 
awhile at Tattersall, where, since the Italian was 
" rider " to the earl, — that is, had charge of the 
training and keeping of his horses, — Smith may 
have picked up a knowledge of horsemanship that 
was to prove useful in the wars. For he did not 
mean to stay in England, and therefore he re- 
turned before long to Elolland in search of active 
employment. 



l8 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

It is natural that we should hear little of 
Smith's early soldiering in France and the Neth- 
erlands, since he was then learning the profession 
of arms— to ride, to care for and to handle his 
weapons; and as he was still less than twenty 
years old he could not expect to be more than an 
unimportant figure in camp or battle. But after 
his short rest in England he again set out " to see 
more of the world, and try his fortune against the 
Turks,'' who were then fighting in Hungary and 
Transylvania against the forces of the German 
emperor, Rudolph 11. The " Turks,'' of whom 
Smith speaks as natural enemies of Christian 
powers, were not the people whom to-day we 
know by that name, but were a number of races 
who, arising in various parts of Asia, had been 
united by the religion of Mohammed, and had ex- 
tended their power by the sword until they 
threatened to overrun Europe. The advance of 
these Moslems had been checked by Charles Mar- 
tel in the great battle of Tours, and then as 
Europe grew in strength the Turks had been 
gradually expelled from the greater part of Euro- 
pean territory. 

But at the end of the sixteenth century, when 
Smith set out for the wars, " lamenting and re- 



HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR IQ 

penting to have seen so many Christians 
slaughter one another,'' the Turks were still in 
Hungary and seemed in no hurry to take leave. 

Smith went to the Netherlands, meaning to 
cross over into the German Empire and thence 
go southwest to the seat of war. But a boy of 
nineteen traveling by himself in those days was 
likely to fall in with thieves ; and the young Eng- 
lish adventurer soon attracted the attention of 
four unscrupulous Frenchmen. They saw he 
was well dressed and had money in his pockets, — 
for he seems to have secured a part of his inheri- 
tance while at Willoughby, — and so they told him 
that he had better come with them to France. 
They said they were going to the Duchess of Mer- 
cury, whose husband was a general in the em- 
peror's service in Hungary. 

Smith thought himself lucky to have fallen in 
with these friends, and went aboard a vessel with 
them to make the voyage to France, meanwhile 
building castles in the air. They arrived at 
night in the broad and shallow inlet of St. Valery, 
off the mouth of the river Somme in Picardy. 
Then the Frenchmen went to the captain of their 
ship and arranged with him to take Smith's trunk 
and their own baggage ashore. They were to go 



20 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

in the boat, while Smith was persuaded to wait 
for a second trip. 

When the captain came back it was late the 
next day, and he excused the delay by saying that 
the sea had been too rough for him to come ear- 
lier. He told Smith that the Frenchmen had gone 
on to Amiens and would wait for him there. 
The other passengers seemed to know that these 
men were swindlers, for they threatened to pun- 
ish the ship's captain, and. Smith says, " would 
have run away with the ship, had they known 
how." 

Smith landed with only a carralne, a small coin 
said to be worth only an English penny, and had 
to sell his cloak to pay for his passage onward. 
On the ship Smith had made friends with an old 
soldier named Curzianvere, who told him that the 
four Frenchmen, instead of being a nobleman and 
his attendants as they had pretended, were only 
young fellows of no claims to distinction unless 
as arrant knaves. Curzianvere invited Smith to 
travel with him, promising that he would take him 
to Lower Brittany, where he could meet people 
who knew the reputation of these swindlers, and 
perhaps recover some of his property. As Smith 
was penniless, Curzianvere supplied his most 



HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 21 

pressing needs, and they went to Dieppe, Caude- 
bec, Honfleur, Pont Audemer, and came to Caen, 
and finally to Mortagne, the home town of the 
Frenchmen who had undertaken the care of 
Smith's baggage. 

Arrived here, Smith found his errand fruitless, 
for Curzianvere was a banished man and did not 
dare be seen in public, and Smith was a stranger 
without friends or witnesses to prove he had been 
robbed. The story of his misfortune, however, 
caused him to be kindly received, and he might 
have spent some time pleasantly in visits to these 
courteous Normandy people. But he says '' his 
restless spirit " would not let him receive favors 
he could not return, and so he set himself the 
task of finding some means of livelihood. He 
went from one port to another along the 
coast until his money and strength were ex- 
hausted, and then, '' near dead with grief and 
cold," he was found by a rich farmer, and taken 
care of until he had recovered his strength. 

Not long after. Smith was passing through a 
wood, when he suddenly met one of the French- 
men who had swindled him. Smith calls this man 
" more miserable than himself,'' but does not ex- 
plain whether he means in health or in goods. 



22 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

simply saying that as soon as they saw one an- 
other it was a matter of drawn swords and single 
combat. 

The honest man overthrew the thief and left 
him to the care of the country folk who had 
viewed the duel from a ruined tower near by. 
There must have been some good in the fellow, for 
he at once related to them how Smith had been 
robbed, though claiming he had been innocent in 
the matter; and he also told of the swindlers' 
quarrels over the spoils when it came to dividing 
them, claiming that he received nothing. 

Soon after this encounter Smith's luck seems to 
have mended, for he came upon a powerful friend 
who gave him what he needed. This friend was 
the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought up in 
England, and probably there knew something of 
Smith's family or circumstances. Whatever the 
reason, this earl and his family enabled Smith to 
go with them throughout southern France and to 
visit the most noted towns. It may be that Smith 
entered their service in some capacity, but it is 
impossible to tell from his few brief words what 
was the relation between them. Nor need we 
care, since Smith was merely sight-seeing, and 
learning those pieces of useful knowledge that 



HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 23 

change an inexperienced boy into a ready, re- 
sourceful man of the world, such as Smith was 
soon to become. 

His next progressive step was to set sail from 
Marseilles for Italy, probably intending to cross 
the Adriatic wSea into Hungary, so that he might 
carry out his plan of waging war against the in- 
fidels. 

But the weather was stormy, and in those days 
this meant that little vessels must make for har- 
bor until a quieter season; so they put into the 
port of Toulon for a while. Again venturing out, 
they were once more forced to come to anchor 
" close aboard the shore under the little Isle of 
St. Mary, against Nice in Savoy.'' And then 
came a happening that reminds us that we are 
reading of three centuries ago. The ship was 
full of pilgrims on their way to Rome, and they 
blamed Smith for the failure of the voyage, be- 
cause he was the only " heretic " aboard. Begin- 
ning with hard words against all the English as 
'^ pirates,'' and against Queen Elizabeth, they 
soon convinced themselves there would be no fair 
weather so long as this Jonah was on the ship, 
and, consequently, they promptly threw him over- 
board. 



24 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Instead of a friendly whale, there was the 
neighboring little island of St. Mary, and Smith 
swam ashore to find it inhabited only by cattle 
and goats. Here he spent the night, and in the 
morning was rescued by Captain La Roche of St. 
Malo, master of two little vessels that also had 
come in for shelter from the storm. 



CHAPTER III 

smith's cruise with captain la ROCHE- 
HE ENLISTS AGAINST THE TURKS 

ALL this took place about the year 1600, when 
L Shakspere was a young man of thirty-six, 
Raleigh forty-eight, and Bacon thirty-nine ; when 
the East India Company was formed to trade 
with the East for spices and silks and ivory ; when 
America was yet a wilderness along the eastern 
coast, though explorers and settlers were work- 
ing to gain a foothold for their own race, and 
though the Spanish had founded a settlement in 
the south and southwest. As yet the English 
race had not even a colony in the New World, and 
Smith, the man who was to make England the 
mistress of a new continent, was on his way to 
risk his life among the Turks in Hungary. 

With Captain La Roche the adventurer sailed 
southeasterly and southerly along Corsica and 
Sardinia, and then to the coast of Africa, coming 
to anchor near Alexandria in Egypt, where the 

25 



26 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

cargoes were unloaded and the two ships were 
free to make their way homeward. But in those 
days there were many ways by which an enter- 
prising seafarer could turn an honest or dishonest 
penny, and what we should now call piracy was 
one of them. Nations were often at war, news 
traveled slowly, and the authorities were never 
hard upon masters of vessels who sank or robbed 
the craft of their rivals in trade. 

Captain La Roche thought it well to see whether 
there were not within reach some richly laden 
vessel to plunder; so he sailed westward along 
Cyprus, Crete, and then northerly until he came 
to the narrow entrance to the Adriatic Sea, where 
he lay in wait, expecting a Venetian merchant- 
man returning from the Orient, one of the argo- 
sies that brought wealth to the merchants of 
Venice when lucky enough to escape the watchful 
pirates and privateers. 

Soon one of these millionaires of the deep came 
in sight and was hailed; but the Venetian's reply 
was a cannon-shot that killed a sailor, and then 
a battle began. The argosy tried to escape, but 
the Breton shot her sails and rigging to pieces, 
and the Venetian had to fight. Twice the Bretons 
boarded but were repulsed; the third time, the 



SEA FIGHTS AND LAND FIGHTS 27 

Venetians set the attacking ship afire. But the 
flames were put out, and the Venetian was 
hulled by cannon-shot until she seemed sinking, 
and had to surrender. 

The battle had been a fierce one, fifteen of the 
attacking crew being killed, and twenty of the 
Venetians, besides many wounded; and it was 
necessary to work busily to keep the great ship 
afloat while she was robbed. For a whole night 
and day the privateers helped themselves to 
'' silks, velvets, cloth of gold and tissue," and 
sequins, piasters, and '' sultanies," which were 
gold and silver coins ; then, tired by the work, they 
set their victim adrift, leaving in her as much 
booty as they had taken. 

Then the thief sailed away to repair damages, 
and arrived, without further adventure or crime, 
at " Antibes in Piedmont," where Smith was set 
ashore with five hundred sequins (about a thou- 
sand dollars) and, as Smith puts it, " a little box 
God sent him, worth near as much more." 

What he means by this the reader may guess 
as well as I. But I think it is a sly way of saying 
that he found a valuable little casket on board the 
Venetian and was able to hide it in his clothing 
unseen by his companions. By the phrase " God 



28 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

sent him " he meant no more than we would mean 
in saying ''that came by good luck" or ''by 
chance." In reading the words of other times 
we must make allowance for the fashion of 
the day, and not take this phrase as an impious 
joke. It has been suggested that Smith received 
the casket as a reward for saving some of the 
Venetians from violence. If so, his omission of 
the incident would show great modesty in the 
writer ; and the fact that the captain of the Breton 
vessel gave him one thousand dollars or more is 
a proof that Smith did his part in the battle, 
though he says nothing of his own deeds. 

From Antibes, Smith went across the Gulf of 
Genoa to Leghorn, and thence to Siena, where he 
found the two sons of Lord Willoughby (the fa- 
ther being dead, and the elder having succeeded 
to the title) " cruelly wounded in a desperate 
fray, yet to their exceeding great honor " ; and 
thereafter to Rome, where he saw the sights, with 
money in his pocket; down the Tiber to Civita 
Vecchia, where he took ship for Naples; and 
thence made a tour of Italy northerly to Venice, 
from which city he crossed the Adriatic to Ra- 
gusa, landed, and went across the mainland to 
Gratz, in Styria. Here he met with fellow-coun- 



SEA FIGHTS AND LAND FIGHTS 29 

trymen who made him acquainted with Lord 
Ebersbaught, an official of influence in the service 
of the emperor. 

Through this nobleman Smith was recom- 
mended to Baron Kisell, General of the Artillery, 
and assigned to duty under the Earl of Meldritch, 
Colonel Henry Volda. With him the English 
soldier went to Vienna, now ready to begin his 
campaign against the conquering Turks. 

The Turks not long after Smith's arrival had 
besieged and taken the city of Kanizsa, between 
Balaton Lake and the Drave River, and from 
there had advanced with twenty thousand men 
against another town commanded by Smith's 
patron, Lord Ebersbaught. This is now called 
Ober Limbach, though Smith writes it " Olum- 
pagh." Baron Kisell was sent with ten thousand 
men to rescue the town, and on his arrival found 
the Turks surrounding it and preventing all 
access. It was necessary to establish communica- 
tion with Ebersbaught's forces, and here Smith 
was able to be of use. 

He told Baron Kisell that he had formerly 
spoken to Lord Ebersbaught of a system of tele- 
graphing by torches; and Smith offered to send 
any message required. The baron was willing to 



30 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

make the trial, and sent guides with Smith to a 
mountain overlooking the town. Three torches 
at equal distances were set up. After a time the 
signal was repeated from the town, and then the 
telegraphing began, across seven miles of space 
held by the enemy. 

The method was to divide the alphabet (except 
y and u, which were then considered other forms 
of i and v) into two parts, one ending with I, the 
other containing the rest. Then a torch was 
shown and hidden, shown and hidden, while the 
reader said each time, '' a, h, c/' and so on. Thus 
one torch shown five times meant e; seven times, 
g; and so on. When two torches appeared to- 
gether, were hidden, appeared and were hidden, 
the reader began with m instead of a. Thus " all 
right'' would be spelled thus: one torch shown; 
pause till an answering light is shown by the 
reader, meaning " I read a." Then one torch 
shown eleven times in succession; pause for an- 
swering light. Eleven times more ; and pause for 
answer. Three lights together, meaning " word 
ended.'' Then two lights, pause; two lights, 
pause; and so on six times for r; then one light 
nine times, and so on through the message. 



O 

> 



1. K 

S > 

- :^ 

n 

^ O 



CAI 



X 
H 
^- v. 

rr - 

?i 

':^ O 

< ■, 
m <—i 

F X 

> K 

I > 
; > 

o ^ 
S w 

< I—: 
o' >_: 

' R 

H 
G 

r^ 




il 



liilii' 












•■villi .,, 

mm 



■"ifykfi§"' ,.' ' 



?i''..-M''vit!l 



,. ,^^jm^€ I 












f'itite iitj.!i i!y,ii 



SEA FIGHTS AND LAND FIGHTS 33 

Slow signaling this, compared with the modern 
wigwagging; but it saved the town, for Smith 
sent the message successfully. It read : " On 
Thursday at night I will charge on the 
East ; at the alarum, sally you " ; and Baron 
Kisell, who had feared to attack twenty thousand 
Turks with but ten thousand men, was encour- 
aged by the report of the guides who had been 
with Smith upon the mountain. They had noted 
that a river divided the Turkish forces into two 
parts, and thus half the force might be attacked 
at a time. 

Then Smith made another suggestion. As the 
attack was to be made at night, he* said they 
might attach to long pieces of rope bits of fuse; 
then, by stretching the ropes between upright 
stakes and setting fire to the fuses, it would ap- 
pear that ranks of musketeers, with lighted 
matches to fire their guns, were advancing to the 
attack. Of course, you must remember that the 
muskets of that time were fired by putting a 
lighted fuse to the touch-hole, as was done with 
cannon until a much later time. 

The attack was made as agreed; Ebersbaught 
sallied out from the town at the same time, and 



34 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

the lighted bits of match on the ropes lured many 
of the Turks in a wrong direction, so that the 
confusion among the besiegers prevented their 
making effective resistance. 

Baron Kisell was able to send two thousand 
soldiers into the town to aid the garrison, while 
the rest of his men withdrew in good order. The 
Turks fled away from the side attacked, and left 
behind them in their retreat enough provisions 
to make the town secure against famine. 

The siege being thus made hopeless, the Turks 
marched away to Kanizsa, while Kisell returned 
triumphant to his superiors. But the baron 
must have been an honest man, for he did not 
forget the credit due to the young Englishman; 
he appointed John Smith captain of two hun- 
dred and fifty horsemen and otherwise rewarded 
him. 

Thus John Smith became " Captain John 
Smith," and was fairly launched upon his career 
as a soldier of the Emperor of Germany. Prob- 
ably he had not as yet the slightest suspicion that 
he would ever see America, and apparently he 
had no purpose in life except to keep busy and to 
see the world, as soldier or sailor or gentleman 
adventurer, — taking little thought for the mor- 



SEA FIGHTS AND LAND FIGHTS 35 

row, and troubled by few principles beyond a cer- 
tain patriotism and a preference for slaying 
infidels rather than Christians. 

But, unknown to himself, his life so far was the 
very best preparation for the great work he was 
to do in the future. 



CHAPTER IV 

HIS FURTHER EXPERIENCES IN WARRING 
AGAINST THE INFIDELS 

IN following Captain Smith's personal ad- 
ventures there is no reason why we must ac- 
quaint ourselves with all the whys and wherefores 
of the phases of the war against the Turks. It 
will be enough to understand that, in spite of a 
rumor that peace was to be declared, the Turks 
proceeded to gather soldiers for the conquest of 
Hungary, while the German emperor put into the 
field three armies to oppose them. One of these 
included the Duke de Mercoeur's forces ('' Mer- 
cury '' is the form Smith uses for the duke's 
name) and consequently Captain Smith; and this 
army was sent to take the city Stuhlweissenburg, 
a fortified stronghold of the Turks, so strong as 
to be thought impregnable. Mercoeur's army 
consisted of thirty thousand men, of which about 
ten thousand were Frenchmen. 

Hardly had the siege begun when the Turks 

36 



FIGHTING THE INFIDELS ^ 

made a sally by night. Attacking the Germans, 
who were encamped in a quarter by themselves, 
the wily Turks slew nearly five hundred of them, 
and made good their retreat within the walls. 
The next night they as suddenly attacked another 
part of the besiegers' forces, that of the 
'' Bemers "—whatever race they were, possibly 
Bohemians — and the Hungarians, with similar 
success. 

But when, forgetting the wise proverb about 
" the pitcher that goes too often to the well," they 
attempted to play the same trick upon the French 
quarter, they found everything ready for their 
attack, and lost eight or nine hundred men, which 
effectually checked their ardor. 

Certain refugees from the town had told Earl 
Meldritch that there were stations where many 
Turks gathered at night upon a signal; and the 
earl requested Captain Smith to make some "fiery 
dragons " to discharge against these places. 
These dragons were a kind of bomb, prepared by 
filling earthen jars with gunpowder, pitch, and 
other combustibles and missiles, to be flung from 
slings or catapults. At the usual signal for the 
assembling of the Turks— very likely for religious 
services in their mosques — these dragons went 



3^ CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

flaming through the night, carrying dismay and 
destruction into the enemy's throngs, as was 
proved to the artillerymen by the lamentable 
cries of the wounded that arose wherever the 
dragons descended. The bombs also set fire to 
the houses where they fell, and Smith believed 
that if an attack could have been made immedi- 
ately after the bombardment, the city would have 
been taken. 

The city was finally captured by an ingenious 
device. There were two main suburbs, even more 
strongly defended than the city itself. One of 
these was thought to be safe from attack becaiase 
of the swampy ground that surrounded it; and 
one night half of the Christians advanced against 
this suburb, while a heavy artillery fire was kept 
up against the other. When they came to the 
swamps, the soldiers, who were provided with 
bundles of sedges and "bavins'' (or brushwood), 
filled up the marshy spots, and thus were able to 
assault the Turks upon that side. Surprised, the 
defenders fled into the city in a panic, whereupon 
a retreat from the other side began, and both 
suburbs fell into the hands of the besiegers. 
Then, shielded by the Turks' own intrenchments, 
the besiegers battered the city with its own cap- 



FIGHTING THE INFIDELS 39 

tured ordnance until it surrendered; and, of 
course, a massacre of the infidels began. 

The bashaw, or Turkish commander, tried to 
hold out in his own palace, but it was soon taken, 
the bashaw being captured by Earl Meldritch 
himself. Thereupon the fortifications were re- 
paired and made ready to maintain the city if the 
Turks should try to retake it. It had been in their 
possession for nearly sixty years, and was not 
likely to be abandoned without an attempt at its 
recovery. 

Even during the siege the Sultan, Mohammed 
III., had raised an army of sixty thousand men 
to rescue the city ; and though it had been taken, 
he ordered his general the Bashaw Assan (or 
Hassam) to march with this force against the 
captured stronghold. 

The Duke de Mercoeur believed that this lately 
raised army must consist of raw recruits; so, 
leaving a strong garrison in the fortress, he 
marched to encounter the Turks in open field, hav- 
ing twenty thousand to pit against the sixty 
thousand. The two armies met while upon the 
march, and. Smith says, " began a hot and bloody 
skirmish, regiment against regiment, as they 
came in order, until the night parted them.*' In 



40 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

this battle, Earl Meldritch and his regiment were 
nearly surrounded among '' the half-circular 
regiments of Turks " ; but fighting fiercely hand 
to hand, the earl cut his way through them and 
escaped, though half his regiment was lost. 
Smith, a captain in this regiment, had his horse 
killed under him and was severely wounded, but 
caught one of the riderless horses, of which he 
says '' there was choice enough," and so came 
safely out. 

After this first encounter, both sides in- 
trenched and remained quiet several days, the 
Turks meanwhile sending twenty thousand men 
to lay siege to Stuhlweissenburg. Daily the 
Turks invited Meldritch to a set battle, and at 
length the Christians came out of their trenches 
and charged the Turks with fury, driving them 
back to their camp, slaying six thousand, includ- 
ing the bashaw (or pasha), who was second in 
command, and five or six minor commanders, be- 
sides capturing two hundred prisoners and nine 
pieces of ordnance. 

But reinforcements appearing to aid the Turks, 
the attack was suspended, and once more Chris- 
tians and Turks retired to their intrenched works. 
The weather, however, became so severe that the 



FIGHTING THE INFIDELS 4I 

soldiers on both sides lost heart for the struggle, 
and the Turks retreated to Budapest, about 
forty miles northeasterly, and lost some of their 
rear-guard in so doing. 

Thereupon the Turks who had been sent to be- 
siege Stuhlweissenburg, and who had found the 
place repaired and ready for them, marched 
away, retiring to '' Zigetun " — which may mean 
Szegedin, since in this unmapped region Smith's 
spelling of proper names was mainly a matter of 
sound. Szegedin was about one hundred miles 
southeasterly. 

The enemy being thus repulsed, the Duke de 
Mercceur divided his army into three parts, send- 
ing one third to help in the siege of Kanizsa, one 
third to garrison the towns Gran and Komorn, 
on the road toward Vienna, while Meldritch 
(with whom was Captain Smith) went to fight 
in Transylvania. 

Then the duke returned to Vienna, where he 
was highly honored for his victories, and next re- 
paired to Nuremberg on his way to France to 
raise more troops. At Nuremberg was held a 
great banquet, where the duke was feasted by the 
archduke and the nobility. Next day he was 
dead, and his brother-in-law died two days later. 



42 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Some historians believe he was poisoned 
through jealousy of his growing fame; but why 
the brother-in-law was included in the crime is 
not suggested. May not the change from the 
winter campaign in Hungary to the feasting and 
merrymaking in Vienna and Nuremberg have 
caused something like an attack of apoplexy or 
heart-disease? Even in those times jealousy of a 
successful commander seems hardly motive 
enough to lead to a double murder. Either way, 
we need not discuss the matter, since Captain 
Smith's fortunes were concerned only with the 
army that was sent into Transylvania. 

Little is said by Smith of their journey by win- 
ter, though he informs us that they suffered as 
much as the army sent to the siege of Kanizsa, 
and gives us a hint of that army's terrible plight 
by the statement that three or four hundred of 
them perished in a single night by freezing. He 
seems more anxious to write a history than an 
autobiography, and gives considerable space to 
explaining how the Earl Meldritch came to enter 
the service of Prince Sigismund of Transylvania, 
instead of offering his arms to the representative 
of the emperor. As to this it will be enough to 
say Meldritch was a native of Transylvania and 



FIGHTING THE INFIDELS 43 

preferred the cause of Prince Sigismund partly 
for that reason, and partly because of the death 
of the Duke de Mercoeur, which he seems to have 
thought due to treachery. 

At all events, Meldritch easily persuaded his 
troops to follow him into the prince's service, and 
was warmly welcomed, being appointed camp- 
master of the Transylvanian army, and gener- 
ously receiving permission to plunder the Turks 
at will. 

So Captain Smith, after having served in the 
Netherlands, in France, on the high seas, and 
in Hungary under the German emperor, was 
now risking his bones in the cause of a prince of 
Transylvania, but still against his old enemies the 
Turks. 

In former times the profession of a soldier was 
looked upon as a businesslike calling; and Cap- 
tain Smith had few scruples in employing his good 
sword against the " infidels " no matter in whose 
quarrel. To kill off unbelievers, so far from being 
considered inhuman, was then thought praise- 
worthy. When we recall the " good old times '* 
it is well to bear in mind matters of this sort so 
that we may not think we are in all respects less 
good than our ancestors. Remembering the 



44 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Boxer troubles in China, and the universal con- 
demnation of cruelty and bloodshed even when 
committed against the unbelieving natives of the 
Chinese Empire, we may conclude that the people 
of to-day are somewhat more humane than their 
forebears of the sixteenth century. 

There has been much controversy as to the 
situation of various places Captain Smith men- 
tions in this part of his adventures; but we shall 
beg leave to refer inquisitive readers to other 
works for these particulars. We are more inter- 
ested in the captain's own exploits than in the 
minute geography of the battle-fields. 

Meldritch waited until spring to begin his 
campaign against a certain city called '' Regall " 
— a place held by Turks, Tatars, banditti, and 
renegades, in the " Land of Zarkam." This lo- 
cality has not been certainly identified, but there 
seems no reason to doubt the story concerning the 
events. In that region many changes have oc- 
curred since Smith wrote. The city Regall was 
strong by reason of being in the mountains, and 
was well fortified. To reach it, Meldritch had to 
advance through a narrow valley guarded by the 
enemy, and this valley he captured by a clever 
stratagem. He sent a number of regiments to 



FIGHTING THE INFIDELS 45 

hide in the valley by night, and directed them to 
drive a herd of cattle through the valley in the 
morning. The enemy, seeing these animals 
guarded by only a small party, came out of their 
forts to capture them; whereupon the concealed 
regiments attacked the bandits and cut them off 
from their stronghold. This gave Meldritch con- 
trol of the valley. 

But, nevertheless, it required six days' work 
of six thousand pioneers to clear a road so that 
the cannon could be taken through the mountain 
pass. This delay was unfortunate, since it gave 
the enemy in the city of Regall a whole week in 
which to prepare for the siege by calling in their 
forces and collecting supplies. 

They did not think Meldritch with his small 
army, about eight thousand men, could possibly 
take their strongly guarded city. Indeed, they 
showed their contempt of the besiegers by com- 
ing out to attack them before they could pitch 
their tents. A bloody battle followed in which 
within an hour some fifteen hundred fell on each 
side, but the disciplined troops of Meldritch were 
victorious and drove the Turks back to their city, 
only ceasing the pursuit when within range of 
the guns on the fortifications. 



46 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Next day the besiegers were strengthened by 
the coming of a Transylvanian army nine thou- 
sand strong, bringing twenty-six cannon, and 
then these two forces gave a month's work to 
making intrenchments for their protection, and 
in raising mounds on which to place their bat- 
teries for attacking the city. 



CHAPTER V 



CAPTAIN smith's THREE COMBATS AGAINST 
TURKISH CHAMPIONS 



THIS leisurely preparation for the siege 
greatly amused the Turks, who derided the 
Christians, shouting to them such sarcastic re- 
marks as their wits could devise. The Turks 
asked their foes whether they had pawned their 
cannon, and told them they would grow fat for 
lack of exercise. Then they professed to fear that 
the Christians would go away without giving the 
Turks the pleasure of fighting them; and so a 
chivalrous Turkish knight sent a challenge to the 
besiegers. This defiance Smith states as follows : 

" That to delight the Ladies, who did long to 
see some court-like pastime, the Lord Turbashaw 
did defy any Captain, that had the command of a 
company, who durst combat with him for his 
head." ' 

Remembering that " bashaw " means " gen- 
eral," it seems likely that " Turbashaw " means 

47 



48 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

simply a Turk-general ; but it may be that Smith 
is trying to spell the sound of a name unknown 
to us. The challenge, after some discussion, was 
accepted; and so many captains volunteered to 
meet the Turkish champion that lots were drawn 
for the honor. Captain Smith happened to be the 
chosen captain, and then a truce was agreed upon 
so that the combat might be seen by both sides. 

On the appointed day the ramparts of the city 
were filled with spectators, '' fair dames and men 
in arms," while the besiegers were drawn up in 
a battalion outside. 

Then, to the sound of the trumpet, the Turkish 
champion rode out into the field. He was well 
mounted and well armed, preceded by a janizary, 
or squire, to bear his lance, while two more atten- 
dants led his horse by the bridle. Upon the 
Turk's shoulders were two great wings made of 
eagle feathers, set in a ridge of silver and " richly 
garnished with gold and precious stones," al- 
together a very dandified champion, fit to fight in 
a fairy-story tournament. He took his station 
to await his adversary. 

Again the trumpets sounded, and Captain 
Smith rode out in simpler fashion, attended only 
by one page to carry his lance. 



HIS SINGLE COMBATS 49 

On the signal for the charge, both spurred 
forward with their lances at rest, and — alas 
for Turbashaw!— Captain Smith's lance pierced 
through the Turk's head and bore him to the 
ground dead. Thereupon, in accordance with the 
terms of the challenge, Captain Smith removed 
the helmet, and, cutting off the head, took the 
trophy to the Christian camp. Smith had received 
no hurt at all, and presented the head to the 
Transylvanian general, while the whole army joy- 
fully welcomed him. 

Naturally, the Turks were not likely to rest 
content under the defeat of their champion; and 
at once came a second challenge from a '' vowed 
friend " of the defeated man. This Turk, named 
Grualgo, challenged Captain Smith to combat, 
offering his horse and armor to his conqueror if 
defeated, claiming Turbashaw's head if suc- 
cessful. 

Next day Captain Smith met Grualgo, who 
proved a better hand with the lance than the slain 
Turk; for both lances were shivered to splinters 
without unhorsing either rider, though the Turk 
had difficulty in keeping his seat. Both then drew 
pistols and fired. Smith was struck upon the 
breastplate, but without injury to himself. At 



50 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

another shot, Smith wounded the Turk in the left 
arm, so that he was unable both to control his 
horse and to defend himself. He fell from his 
horse, and Smith carried away his head, together 
with his horse and armor, as had been agreed. 
But Smith left the fallen man and his " rich ap- 
parel " to his friends. 

Meanwhile, the besiegers' works were not com- 
pleted, and there were small skirmishes from 
time to time. But the Turks avoided a serious 
engagement, and matters seeming to lack excite- 
ment, at length Captain Smith sent word to the 
Turks that " their ladies might know he was not 
so much enamoured of their servants' heads, but 
if any Turk of their rank would come to the place 
of combat to redeem them, he should have his also 
upon the like conditions, if he could win it." 

This challenge is not altogether pleasing to our 
taste; but we must remember in judging of it that 
ideas were different in those days, and that the 
days of chivalry were then not so far in the past. 
Captain Smith was risking his life in the service 
every day, and he may have thought it proper to 
show the Turks that the Christians were as chiv- 
alrous as themselves, and were as ready to issue 
as to accept challenges. 



HIS SINGLE COMBATS 51 

Captain Smith's offer was accepted by a cham- 
pion whom he calls " Bonny Mulgro," and they 
met upon the field as before. This time the Turk, 
being the challenged party, had the choice of 
weapons, and apparently preferred not to meet 
Smith with the lance, for lances were not used. 
First, then, they discharged pistols, but neither 
was harmed; next, they fought with battle-axes. 
And here Smith was almost overcome. The blows 
made sometimes one, sometimes the other reel in 
his saddle, for both champions were almost 
stunned. Smith finally dropped his ax, and was 
almost knocked from his horse ; whereupon the 
Turks cheered from the ramparts, believing their 
champion was to be at last successful. Bonny 
Mulgro pressed the attack, but Smith, by adroit 
management and by the readiness of his horse, 
managed to avoid the Turk— "by God's assis- 
tance," Smith says— until he had drawn his 
sword and succeeded in stabbing the Turk from 
the back. The Turk then alighted from his horse, 
but was soon afterward overcome and " lost his 
head as the rest had done." 

Thereupon Smith had a grand reception. Six 
thousand men escorted him to the general's pa- 
vilion, accompanied by three led horses and three 

4 



52 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

soldiers bearing the Turks' heads upon lances. 
The general embraced the champion, giving him 
'' a fair horse richly furnished/' and a simitar 
and belt worth three hundred ducats, while Mel- 
dritch promoted him to be sergeant-major of his 
regiment, — a rank said to be equivalent to that of 
major in modern armies. This title, however, 
never seems to have replaced that of '' Captain," 
by which Smith has always been called. '' Ser- 
geant-major John Smith " would not sound at all 
familiar. 

This exploit of John Smith's — his slaying of 
three Turkish champions in single combats — is 
one of the occurrences that seem to have preju- 
diced historians against him. Some deny the truth 
of his story, others think it greatly exaggerated. 

It is not easy to see why the story is doubted. 
Surely there is no impossibility or improbability 
in it, and there is much reason to think it true. 
Smith had, in later life, plenty of enemies who 
would have been glad to convict him of a lie, and 
he publicly bore a coat-of-arms that was granted 
for these exploits. The fights with the Turkish 
champions took place in the presence of thou- 
sands of men, and in Smith's own time no one 
tried to deny his right to the coat-of-arms he bore. 



HIS SINGLE COMBATS 53 

As to the combats themselves, there is nothing 
unhkely in his success over three challengers — or 
half a dozen. Every winner of a tennis tourna- 
ment has to overcome opponent after opponent 
in order to win the prize. Captain Smith was an 
active, healthy man, strong, adroit, and skilled in 
the use of his weapons; and he overcame his 
adversaries, not without difficulty, in different 
ways. The first was slain by skilful use of the 
lance, and we know that Smith had given especial 
pains to perfect himself in tilting; the second was 
shot by a pistol-bullet, after Smith had had a 
narrow escape; the third, though superior with 
the battle-ax, was a poorer horseman, and Smith 
gives full credit to his horse for aiding him to 
conquer. 

It would be more remarkable if history re- 
corded no such combats, whereas the deeds of 
champions in arms are recorded in the annals of 
all lands during those periods when personal 
prowess was the deciding factor in battles; and 
Captain Smith lived in the fringe of those times. 
Gunpowder was used, but the lance, the battle-ax, 
and the sword were still employed in hand-to- 
hand conflicts. 

In short, modern authorities are inclined to 



54 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

confirm the herald's award of the blazoned Turks' 
heads upon the shield of John Smith, brave cham- 
pion of Christendom. To our ideas, his story may 
seem vainglorious, but compared with men of his 
own day, Captain Smith does not lack in modesty. 
Even when brought into comparison with the 
doings of so modern a hero as Henry Stanley or 
of his predecessor, James Bruce, Captain John 
Smith's narrative does not seem unduly to boast, 
nor to give too much space to his personal 
achievements. Indeed, we might be glad of more 
detail. 

Smith next takes up the general operations of 
the siege. 

The time employed by the besiegers in raising 
mounds of earth proved well worth while, for 
they now mounted their cannon fifty or sixty feet 
above the level of the plain and began a bombard- 
ment. In two weeks they battered the walls with 
their twenty-six cannon to such purpose that they 
had broken them down in two places; but the 
Turks bravely defended these breaches, though 
the fire was severe. The text becomes poetical 
here, and, consequently, fails to tell a plain story. 
He writes : " That day was made a darksome 
night, but by the light that proceeded from the 



HIS SINGLE COMBATS 55 

murdering muskets and peace-making cannon; 
whilst their slothful governor lay in a castle on 
the top of a high mountain, and like a valiant 
prince asketh what 's the matter, when horror 
and death stood amazed each at other to see who 
should prevail to make him victorious." 

All this is " fine writing,'' but has the defect of 
being entirely incomprehensible. We can gather 
from it only the suggestion that the Turkish gov- 
ernor was careful to keep out of harm's way, while 
his men were doing their duty in the defense. 

The Transylvanian general now ordered a 
charge to be made up the slope that led to the 
breached wall; and there was great slaughter 
among the Christian troops because the Turks 
rolled down the hill great logs of wood and bags 
of gunpowder (probably with a fuse to explode 
them) and thus killed many. The men charged 
on and were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with 
pikes. 

The Turks stubbornly held their ground until 
the Christians had been reinforced by fresh 
troops, but then were forced up the hill and took 
refuge in the castle or main stronghold. Though 
the Turks now showed the white flag, Earl Mel- 
dritch, whose father had been slain by the Turks 



56 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

in some former fight, gave no quarter. He 
turned against the castle the guns captured in the 
town, and next day took it. The earl then put 
to death the captured Turks, and set their 
heads upon stakes, '' in the same manner they had 
used the Christians " when they first captured the 
city. 

The Transylvanian general now repaired the 
walls of the stronghold, destroyed his own siege- 
works, and left a garrison to keep possession of 
Regall while he marched against three other 
towns, Veratio, Solmos, and Kupronka, to re- 
venge himself for the losses the Turks had in- 
flicted upon his army. He sacked these towns, 
carried off two thousand prisoners, mostly women 
and children, and then marched away to Esen- 
berg, where he went into camp not far from the 
palace of Prince Sigismund, his master. 

The prisoners were handed over to the prince, 
when he came to review the army, and thirty-six 
Turkish standards were presented as trophies. 
The prince piously gave thanks to God for the 
victories and the captured women and children, 
and so ended the Transylvanian campaign. 

From the prince Captain Smith received rich 
reward for his services, being allowed thereafter 



HIS SINGLE COMBATS 57 

to use a coat-of-arms showing three Turks' heads, 
and being promised a yearly pension of three hun- 
dred ducats. Besides these gifts, the prince pre- 
sented his portrait framed in gold, and treated 
the young English soldier with distinguished 
honor. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CHRISTIAN ARMY, 
AND smith's CAPTIVITY 



ALTHOUGH the Turks were thus over- 
^ thrown, Prince Sigismund was not to enjoy 
his realm in peace, for the emperor had no idea of 
giving up his claim to Transylvania. This re- 
gion, from having been one of the most fruitful 
and thriving in eastern Europe, had become, as 
Smith says, " the very spectacle of desolation— 
their fruits and fields overgrown with weeds, 
their churches and battered palaces and best build- 
ings, as for fear, hid with moss and ivy." Cap- 
tain Smith rightly complains that Europe was 
much to blame for this neglect, since Transyl- 
vania was the great natural '' bulwark and ram- 
part '' against the Turks, and yet was ruined by 
the quarrels and strifes among the Christians 
themselves. It is hard to believe that so sensible 
a man as Captain John Smith wrote the para- 
graph which next follows in the narrative, for it 

58 



SMITH A CAPTIVE AND SLAVE 59 

is absolutely meaningless, and is couched in the 
same affectedly poetical language as that quoted 
in the last chapter in reference to the Turkish gov- 
ernor of Regall. It sounds as if it might be the 
work of some conceited ^' literary friend '^ of our 
captain. Judge for yourselves: 

*^ But alas, what is it, when the power of maj- 
esty pampered in all the delights of pleasant 
vanity, neither knowing nor considering the labor 
of the ploughman, the hazard of the merchant, 
the oppression of statesmen; nor feeling the 
piercing torment of broken limbs, and inveterated 
wounds, the toilsome marches, the bad lodging, 
the hungry diet, and the extreme misery that sol- 
diers endure to secure all those estates, and yet by 
the spite of malicious detraction, starves for the 
want of their reward and recompenses ; whilst the 
politic courtier that commonly aims more at his 
honors and ends than his country's good, or his 
prince's glory, honor, or security, as the worthy 
prince too well could testify." 

This paragraph is unadulterated nonsense, and 
was never written, as it now stands, by so plain- 
forward a soldier as John Smith. One can guess 
at its meaning, but surely the meaning is not 
there. The writer, whoever he was, meant to say 



6o CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

that when a monarch neglects the true workers 
in his realm, and rewards only self-seeking cour- 
tiers, the country must go to ruin ; but the quoted 
paragraph is simply the muddy writing of a pre- 
tentious and half-taught writer, whereas Captain 
Smith's own style, if a little faulty, is plain, direct, 
and full of meat, as will be seen in the paragraph 
directly following that quoted : '' The Emperor 
being certified how weak and desperate his 
[Prince Sigismund's] estate was, sent Busca 
with a great army to try his fortune once more in 
Transylvania/' That is Smith's style, — clear, 
direct, simple. 

The prince, upon the coming of the emperor's 
army, saw he could not resist, and asked for a 
truce till he could send messengers to the emperor 
to beg for terms. The prince was successful in 
obtaining terms, and gave up his claim to Tran- 
sylvania in return for other lands, a large sum of 
money, and a pension. 

These terms left his Transylvanian general out 
in the cold, since he was unwilling to submit to the 
emperor ; so he marched against the troops under 
Busca, the emperor's general, and fought a great 
battle lasting six or seven hours, in which six or 
seven thousand were slain, the Transylvanians 



SMITH A CAPTIVE AND SLAVE 6 1 

being defeated and scattered over the country. 
The prince thereupon surrendered the whole 
country to the emperor. 

The scene of battles now shifted to Wallachia, 
where a leader named Jeremie had been sent by 
the Turks to rule the country. His tyranny 
caused a revolution, and Jeremie was expelled. 
But he raised an army of forty thousand Turks, 
Tatars, and Moldavians, and marched against the 
Wallachians. The emperor's general, Busca (or 
Basta), had named Lord Rodollas Prince of Wal- 
lachia, and now sent a large force to meet Jere- 
mie's troops. This force included many of the old 
regiments of Sigismund, among others that of 
Earl Meldritch, in which was Captain Smith, and 
amounted to some thirty thousand men. They 
marched into Wallachia, where Jeremie had for- 
tified himself, and was drawn into a battle only by 
the Christians pretending to retreat. There fol- 
lowed a furious fight in which the Christians were 
victorious, after twenty-live thousand men had 
been left on the field. Lord Rodoll thus gained 
the land of Wallachia, but was not long left in 
peace, for the Turks and Tatars were constantly 
crossing his frontiers. 

Against these foes Earl Meldritch was sent 



62 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

with thirteen thousand men, only to learn that the 
invaders had thirty thousand, while Jeremie with 
some fifteen thousand more was ready to join the 
Tatars. Meldritch wisely retired, but was en- 
gaged in fierce skirmishes during his whole re- 
treat. One part of their retreat led through a 
thick wood, and they felled great trees behind 
them as they advanced so as to hamper the pur- 
suers; and here they had the good fortune to 
capture some two thousand of the enemy, who 
were driving off several hundred horses and cat- 
tle. From these prisoners they learned the posi- 
tions of their enemies. Jeremie was holding the 
valley through which they must retreat, while the 
Tatars were not far away. It was necessary to 
force their way, and Captain Smith's ingenuity 
saved the army. 

By his suggestion, Meldritch caused his men to 
attach to their lances some sort of rockets filled 
with " wild fire " (probably phosphorus, or damp- 
ened gunpowder allowed to dry), and then made 
a night attack, bearing these flaming fire-works 
before them. The horses and men of the enemy 
were thrown into a panic and driven in con- 
fusion, which disposed of Jeremie's forces. But 
the other army, the Tatars, forty thousand in 



SMITH A CAPTIVE AND SLAVE 63 

number, attacked Meldritch's eleven thousand 
men v^hen they were within three leagues of 
safety, and November i8, 1602, a great battle 
took place. 

Meldritch drew up his men at the foot of a 
mountain, having the flanks protected by sharp- 
ened stakes and pitfalls, and by advanced bodies 
of pikemen, who were ordered to retire behind 
these defenses when the Tatars should charge. 

The battle began with ensigns spread, trum- 
pets blowing, and beating of drums. The Tatars 
discharged " flights of numberless arrows,'^ and 
galloped upon the Christians, and after a bloody 
battle of an hour drove back the battle-line; 
whereupon the sharpened stakes and pits threw 
the attacking horsemen into confusion and caused 
them great loss,— a loss increased by the fire of 
cannon that had been planted higher up on the 
mountain slopes. 

The Christians raised a cry of " Victory ! '' 
and Meldritch ordered a general charge in 
the hope of cutting his way through the dense 
masses of the enemy. But numbers prevailed 
against valor, and at nightfall Earl Meldritch, 
with something over a thousand horsemen, swam 
the river Altus, and escaped, leaving some thirty 



64 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

thousand men — his own and the enemy's — upon 
the battle-field. 

This was the end of resistance to the Tatar 
army, and the Christian army was cut to pieces. 
Smith suggests that this disaster was not alto- 
gether unwelcome to the emperor, since it de- 
stroyed many who had been his enemies in Tran- 
sylvania. 

John Smith himself '' lay groaning among the 
rest " upon the field, and was found there by the 
pillagers who came to rob the dead; but Smith 
was dressed well and wore rich armor, and so 
was rescued to be held for ransom together with 
many others. One may judge from this that there 
was no quarter shown to the unfortunate soldiers 
whose armor or clothing showed them unlikely to 
secure ransom. No doubt the Turks were cruel, 
but their foemen seemed quite as ready to commit 
atrocities, — as this history shows, — beheading 
and flaying and slaying whenever the fancy 
struck them, instead of trying to show these un- 
happy infidels how much more humane were the 
soldiers of Christendom. 

Humane or not. Smith's captors were too 
shrewd to neglect him, when by so doing they 
would lower his price in the market; so he was 



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SMITH A CAPTIVE AND SLAVE 6;^ 

carefully tended until cured of his wounds, and 
was then sent for sale as a slave at Axopolis. 
Here Smith and his companions in misery were 
made to wrestle with other slaves so that the mer- 
chants could fully judge of their strength and ac- 
tivity, were carefully examined precisely as cattle 
are looked over to make sure of their soundness, 
and then put up for sale. 

Captain Smith does not tell us the price given 
for him, but records only the name of his buyer, 
the Bashaw Bogall. With the other human cat- 
tle, Smith marched in a gang of twenty slaves, all 
chained by the necks, going by way of Adrianople 
to Constantinople, where each was delivered to 
his special master. Captain Smith found that he 
was the property of a young gentlewoman whose 
name he gives as Charatza Tragabigzanda, — 
after whom the captain named the headland in 
the New World which in later years has been 
called Cape Ann, — and by her he seems to have 
been most kindly treated, so kindly as to suggest 
a touch of romance between the fair Oriental and 
the brave young English captain. 

But if on either side it was a case of true love, 
the old adage was again proved true, for its 
course was in nowise smooth. Captain Smith w^as 



6S CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

not the man to turn Turk, and there was no other 
way in which he could have remained in the land 
except as a slave. And a slave, so far as he could 
see, he was doomed to remain, since there was no 
one who knew his fate or might have been will- 
ing to ransom him had they been aware of his 
captivity. 



CHAPTER VII 

smith's slavery to the TURKS, AND 
HIS ESCAPE 

THE lady, Charatza, showed an interest in 
her bondman and sought occasions to speak 
with him ; even going so far as to feign illness as 
" an excuse to remain at home while others of 
the household went to the public baths or to 
mourn over the graves of their kindred in the 
cemeteries ''—the latter, at least, not seeming to 
us an expedition attractive to a pleasure-loving 
woman. Smith learned that she could speak 
Italian, and was told by her that his purchaser, 
the Bashaw Bogall, had sent Smith to the lady 
with a message that the captain was a Bohemian 
lord whom the valiant Bogall had taken with his 
own mighty hand. Bogall had also added that 
this was but one of many others " which ere 
long he would present her, whose ransoms should 
adorn her with the glory of his conquests ! " Cer- 
tainly Bogall was not a man whose sensitive con- 
5 69 



JO CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

science would prevent him from making out a 
good story, nor one whose modesty would con- 
ceal any valorous deeds he might perform. 

Captain Smith protested he was not aware that 
he had ever been overcome or led away captive by 
the mighty Bogall, and even went so far as to 
deny any knowledge that he was a Bohemian or a 
lord, thus spoiling Bogall's pretty story com- 
pletely. He told Charatza that he was an Eng- 
lishman who had won the title of captain by his 
adventures in Transylvania and thereabouts. 
This was not only the result of modesty and love 
of truth, but probably also a desire to prevent his 
ransom being put too high. Charatza sent for 
interpreters and had Captain Smith relate his ad- 
ventures to her, and showed compassion for him 
in his helpless captivity. But there were no duties 
suited to him in her household, and being afraid 
he might be sold as a useless piece of property, she 
decided to send him to her brother, an official in 
" Nalbrits in the country of Cambia, a province 
in Tartaria." 

Attempts have been made by many writers 
about Captain Smith and his travels to trace accu- 
rately the routes taken by him in these wild and 
little known regions. But the names given by 



SMITH S ESCAPE AND FLIGHT 7 1 

him are spelled by sound, the places often had 
two or more names given by different races, and 
it is not at all unusual for such small towns as 
he passed through to be entirely abandoned, or to 
change their names. So it is not possible to do 
more than ascertain the general localities and fix 
upon the larger places he visited. So far from 
casting doubt upon his story, this should be looked 
upon as a proof of Smith's honesty, since a writer 
making up a fictitious account of pretended travels 
w^ould have been very careful to make his story 
agree with the current maps — the easiest thing 
in the world. It is only fair to Captain Smith to 
say that wherever it has been possible to identify 
his route he proves trustworthy; the names that 
cannot be found are such as occur in the regions 
where he puts them, and some of these names, 
once unknown, have been found upon old maps. 

In his journey from Constantinople to Cambia, 
Smith went in a northerly direction to Varna, in 
Bulgaria, thence across the Black Sea to the nar- 
row strait leading to the Sea of Azof, and then to 
Cambia. If you wish to trace on the map his 
journey after crossing the Black Sea to the mouth 
of the Don River, follow its course to the Manytch 
River, and then go up this river to where it widens 



72 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

near the Ergeni Hills. Smith gives a brief pic- 
ture of the appearance of the region, saying there 
were '' towns with short towers, and a most plain, 
fertile, and delicate country." 

Of the strait he writes, " the channel is deep, 
but at the entrance of the sea Dissabacca there are 
many great osier shoals, and many great black 
rocks. . . . They sailed by many low isles, and 
saw many more of those muddy rocks. Till they 
came between Susax and Curuske, only two white 
towns at the entrance of the river Bruapo ap- 
peared. In six or seven days' sail he saw four 
or five seeming strong castles of stone with flat 
tops and battlements about them." At Gambia 
the river was " more than half a mile broad," and 
near it stood a castle, " of large circumference, 
fourteen or fifteen feet thick at the foundation." 
Some six feet from the wall was a palisade and a 
ditch forty feet wide, making a very defensible 
stronghold. The town was on the west, with low 
and flat houses. Here Smith remained three 
days, and then two days' travel brought him to 
Nalbrits, his destination. 

Here was the castle of Charatza's brother, the 
'' Timour " or ruler of the district. Smith was 
turned over to this man, with a letter from the 



smith's escape and flight ']:^ 

sister recommending that the slave be used kindly 
and taught the language and the Turkish religion 
until Charatza should be able to reclaim him. 
Probably the sister's letter showed too much so- 
licitude about the Christian captive; at all events, 
the brother did not follow out her instructions 
precisely. He ordered his overseer to strip 
Smith of his clothing, shave not only his beard but 
his head " as bare as his hand," and then about 
Smith's neck was riveted a heavy iron ring from 
which projected " a long stalk bowed like a sickle, 
while for covering he was provided with a coat of 
ulgrie's hair," — whatever material that may be, 
possibly goatskin, — with a girdle of rawhide. 
We mav be sure that Charatza, even if not in love 
with the young English captive, would not have 
been pleased with her brother's actions had she 
known of them. 

Smith was now put with many other Christian 
slaves and with nearly a hundred Turkish and 
Moorish convicts, and, being the latest comer, 
was " slave of slaves to them all " ; that is, 
he was received with the same kindly consider- 
ation as is shown to freshmen on entering col- 
lege, new boys in school, " nouveaux " among art 
students and apprentices everywhere. But Smith 



74 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

like a philosopher, remarks that there was '' no 
great choice in these slavish fortunes ; for the best 
was so bad a dog could hardly have lived to en- 
dure; and yet for all their pains and labors they 
were no more regarded than a beast." Let us not 
forget, in judging the Turks, that those were the 
times when the killing of an infidel was no more 
regarded than the drowning of a litter of kittens, 
except as more praiseworthy, so it is hardly to be 
expected that Christian captives should be treated 
with consideration. 

Smith gives a full account of the manner of life 
of the Turks and their slaves. He tells us that 
the Timour and his friends lived upon pilau, a 
dish we have learned from them to enjoy, being 
boiled rice and '' garnances " (probably spices) 
mixed with chopped bits of roast meat, for their 
main dish; and that '' samboyees and muselbits 
are great dainties," being " round pies full of all 
sorts of flesh they can get, chopped with a variety 
of herbs." " Their great drink is cofifa, of a grain 
they call coava boiled with water," and sherbet, 
which is honey and water. Mare's milk or the 
milk of any beast they held restorative, but the 
common people drank pure water. 

The slaves were fed upon a sort of stew made 



smith's escape and flight 75 

of '' cuskus/' a white grain, and the poorer part of 
horseflesh and " ulgries," which, as has been sug- 
gested, may have been goat's flesh. 

The Tatars were dressed in sheepskins tied 
about them, and round felt caps, and hved in poor 
huts, worse than the Irish cabins of that time, or 
in tents which were removed from place to place 
as the nomadic tribes moved to seek fresh pas- 
turage for their animals. 

Smith's accounts of these peoples seem to be 
accurate and to be drawn mainly from his own 
observations, but so many travelers have visited 
these regions since that it is not worth while to 
make record of the more imperfect observations 
of Captain Smith. More interesting are the 
events that led to his escape from slavery and his 
return to Christendom. 

The young man of twenty-three had no hope 
of any betterment save through the kindness of 
Charatza, nor could he find any encouragement 
in his talk with his fellow-slaves ; but Smith was 
too high-spirited to drag out his life in slavery, 
and his pride brought about his escape by forcing 
him to make the attempt. 

He had been put at farm-work upon a grange 
or estate some few miles from the Timour's house 



7^ CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

at Nalbrits, and was often busied threshing out 
the corn, using for the purpose a sort of club or 
bludgeon, since the Turks had no flails. The 
Timour occasionally came to visit the little farm, 
and took pains to call upon his Christian captive 
for the pleasure of abusing him, even proceeding 
so far as to beat the poor fellow. This was a 
dangerous pastime with a soldier and a strong 
young man of pride and pluck, and the Turkish 
bully soon discovered that in the young English 
slave he had " caught a Tatar." Captain Smith 
left off his threshing of grain, used his club on 
the head of the Turk, and slew him outright. 

This violence was most imprudent, and yet 
proved to be the safest thing he could have done. 
Smith was now forced to run away in spite of all 
risks and dangers, knowing that if he were 
caught he might be put to death with all the re- 
finements of cruelty known to these ingenious 
Orientals. So he hid the body of his victim under 
the straw, to delay discovery as long as possible, 
dressed himself in the Timour's garments, filled 
a bag with corn, shut the door of the building, 
mounted the Turk's horse and rode away into the 
wilderness with no purpose except to get as far 
away as he could. 



SMITH S ESCAPE AND FLIGHT "]"] 

For two or three days he wandered at random, 
" and well it was he met not any to ask the way," 
and then at the last extremity '' God did direct 
him to the great way or Castragan, as they call it, 
which doth cross these large territories," and was 
known by certain guide-posts set up at its cross- 
ings with other roads. On these posts were arms 
to direct the traveler; and as few of them could 
read, there were finger-posts, or "bobs," as Smith 
names them, upon which were painted symbols in- 
dicating whither the roads led. 

Thus that arm toward the country of Crim- 
Tatars bore the crescent ; toward Persia "a 
black man full of white spots "; toward China, a 
sun ; toward Russia, a cross ; and so on. For six- 
teen days' travel, fearing lest he should meet some 
travelers with the iron collar still about his neck, 
and be sent back to his master's estate. Smith fol- 
lowed the signboards bearing the figure of the 
cross, and then arrived at the town ^copolis 
upon the river Don, a Russian outpost, and knew 
he was once more free. 

The governor and " the good Lady Calla- 
mata " treated him with all hospitality ; the iron 
collar was taken from his neck and he was gen- 
erously cared for until fully recovered. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HIS FURTHER ADVENTURES IN EUROPE AND 
AFRICA— A SEA-FIGHT 

IT was not considered safe to travel in those 
lands except in large parties, and so Captain 
Smith remained until a ''convoy," or caravan, left 
the outpost, and then departed, after being pro- 
vided by the governor with a certificate setting 
forth how Smith came into his hands, and with a 
letter of introduction to other Russian chiefs at the 
various towns through which they were to pass. 
With the Russian convoys Smith traveled most 
comfortably. He says : " In all his life he seldom 
met with more respect, mirth, content, and enter- 
tainment; and not any governor where he came 
but gave him something as a present, beside 
his charges [that is, entertained him free] ; see- 
ing themselves as subject to a like calamity." 
And, indeed, upon the frontiers and in these wild 
countries there was constant danger of the de- 
scent of a great horde of Tatar horsemen to 

78 



EUROPE AND AFRICA. A SEA-FIGHT 79 

carry off the Russians into the captivity from 
which Smith had so fortunately escaped. 

Smith describes the great Russian plains much 
as a modern traveler might do— the log-houses, 
thatched with split boards, the corduroy roads 
over boggy places, the palisaded fortress-like 
towns far apart from one another; and then 
briefly names places in Transylvania, Hungary, 
and Bohemia, through which he passed in great 
satisfaction over his escape, and thankfulness to 
be with friends once more. 

At length, in " Lipswick "(Leipsic)he was for- 
tunate enough to meet Prince Sigismund and his 
old commander, Earl Meldritch; and the Prince 
gave him another copy of the grant of arms and 
safe conduct — the first having doubtless been 
lost after the battle— besides 1500 ducats (some 
$2500) '' to repair his losses. "" Thus restored to 
freedom and fortune. Smith resumed his travels 
in Europe, visiting Dresden, Magdeburg, Bruns- 
wick, Augsburg, Frankfort, and so on, until he 
had made his way through Paris to Orleans, 
thence down the Loire to the sea, where he took 
ship for Spain, and spent some time visiting the 
great cities of that land. 

Next he crossed to Africa, having heard of "the 



8o CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

wars in Barbary," and, joining a French party 
from a man-of-war, he went on an expedition of 
inquiry and sight-seeing to Morocco " to see the 
ancient monuments of that large renowned city." 
These he describes after the manner of travelers 
in the days when most of his readers were stay-at- 
home folks who knew little of the world beyond 
their market-towns. Some of his stories make 
good reading, but they are not about the renowned 
captain himself, and so demand no place here. 
To readers of his own time Captain Smith's 
accounts of the " Portugalls " in Africa were of 
interest and importance, but to us it would have 
been more to the purpose if he had described fully 
and exactly the sights that to him were every-day 
matters — as did Pepys in his famous diary. It 
may be remarked, however, that Smith's state- 
ments about the lands he visited show him an hon- 
est traveler, a good observer, and not credulous; 
thus in speaking of elephants he says : 

" Though some report they cannot kneel, nor 
lie down, they can do both, and have their joints, 
as other creatures, for use; with their forefeet 
they will leap upon trees to pull down the boughs, 
and are of that strength they will shake a great 
cocar [coca?] tree for the nuts, and pull down 



EUROPE AND AFRICA. A SEA-FIGHT 8 1 

a good tree with their tusks to get the leaves to 
eat, as well as sedge and long grass, cocar nuts 
and berries, etc., which with their trunk they put 
in their mouth, and chew it with their smaller 
teeth." By " leap upon " he means '^ push 
against." Certainly this is a very sensible and 
careful account of the elephant, an animal then 
almost unknown in Europe and England. 
Wherever Smith gives his personal observations 
he v/rites like an honest man. 

" But," our traveler concludes his chapter, " by 
reason of the uncertainty and the perfidious, 
treacherous, bloody murders, rather than war, 
among those perfidious, barbarous Moors," he re- 
turned from his expedition, and went aboard ship 
" to try some other conclusions at sea." This 
was in the year 1604. 

Arriving at Safi, Smith and some of his com- 
panions were invited by Captain Merham, com- 
mander of a man-of-war then lying off that town, 
to come aboard with him ; and the captain enter- 
tained the party so hospitably that they found it 
too late to go ashore that night, and were com- 
pelled to stay aboard. " A fairer evening could 
not be," he tells us, " yet ere midnight such a 
storm did arise they were forced to let slip cable 



82 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

and anchor [that is, they had no time to raise the 
anchor], and put to sea, spooning before the wind 
till they were driven to the Canaries/' " Spoon " 
is a form of the word '' spoom," an old expression 
meaning to sail steadily, as when a ship drives be- 
fore the wind ; and the Canary Islands were about 
five hundred miles southwesterly from Safi. 

Undoubtedly the man-of-war commanded by 
Captain Merham was a species of privateer; for 
she took advantage of her cruise to capture a 
small bark from Teneriffe loaded with wine, and 
to pursue four others, two of which were taken 
but yielded little booty. From passengers in these 
they learned of five Dutch war-vessels being about 
the isles, and so deemed it wise to stand off for 
Cape Bojador, further south upon the African 
coast. 

Soon after they came upon two ships. Cap- 
tain Merham hailed, whereupon they saluted by 
dipping their topsails, and invited him to come 
aboard and take what he would, " for they were 
but two poor distressed Biskiners,'' or merchant- 
ships from the Bay of Biscay — which is the mean- 
ing of Biskiners. But Captain Merham, whom 
Smith calls '' the old fox,'' was not deceived by 
this yarn, seeing that the vessels were Spanish 



EUROPE AND AFRICA. A SEA-FIGHT 83 

men-of-war. He steered closer to the wind, hop- 
ing he might thus escape his two big enemies. 
They tacked after him, and the nearer fired a 
broadside, which was repeated by the other, and 
then began a fierce fight. 

Merham's vessel was boarded, but the attack 
was repulsed, the Spaniard losing four or five 
men ; and the cannonading continued for an hour. 
AgRin the Spanish ship ran up close, and threw 
grapnels with chains attached into the grating of 
Merham's ship, intending then to sheer off and 
tear it down. Possibly this grating was the bul- 
warks behind which the crew were sheltered in 
repelling boarders. 

But the rigging of the Spaniard had caught in 
that of the other ship, and before she could cut 
loose, Merham fired into her bow crossbar-shot 
and bolts of iron, cutting a great hole that nearly 
sunk her. Merham then feared they would sink 
together, and both crews united in cutting loose 
and in casting off the grappling-hooks. The 
ships separated, and the less injured of the Span- 
iards kept up a fierce fire of ordnance and mus- 
kets while the injured one was stopping the leak 
in the bow. For six hours the fight continued, 
and then the Spaniard drew astern to wait for his 



84 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

consort to come up, and both continued the chase 
all night, while Merham kept on his course to- 
ward Mamora; but the wind was light and they 
made little progress. After a heavy cannonading 
the Spaniards offered quarter if Merham would 
surrender; but that gallant captain stood up and 
derisively drank their health, and then let fly with 
his guns. Enraged by his defiance, the Span- 
iards again boarded, and many climbed up the 
rigging, meaning to cut down the mainsail, 
whereupon that sail was suddenly lowered and 
the Spanish sailors fell with it. 

After a bloody hand-to-hand struggle upon the 
deck, in which the great cabin was blown up, and 
so much fire and smoke was seen that all thought 
the ship was on fire, the boarders were repulsed. 
Then Merham's men betook themselves to extin- 
guishing the flames, while the Spaniards still kept 
up a heavy fire ; but soon the flames were out, the 
vessel patched up with old sails, and Merham's 
men prepared " to fight to the last man.'' 

The enemy now hung out a white flag to ask 
for a parley, but Merham refused to stop fighting, 
and the ships continued to sail and the guns to 
roar all the afternoon and half through the night, 
until the Spaniards either " lost them or left 



EUROPE AND AFRICA. A SEA-FIGHT 85 

them," probably thinking so sturdy a fighter as 
Merham a good thing to lose. 

Merham had twenty-seven slain and sixteen 
wounded, while in his vessel were one hundred 
and forty " great shot/' or cannon-balls ; but a 
wounded Spaniard whom they carried off con- 
fessed his side had had far the worst of the 
fight. 

• After repairs, the ship sailed by way of the is- 
lands to Safi again, and then, as it is briefly put, 
" Smith returned to England.'' 

And this man, whom some call a braggart and 
liar, never tells us one word of his part in this 
fierce battle — a most exciting dessert to the quiet 
little dinner to which Captain Merham had in- 
vited his friends that evening in Safi harbor. 



CHAPTER IX 

SMITH JOINS GOSNOLd's EXPEDITION, AND 
MAKES THE VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA 

IN his book, " The Beginners of a Nation," 
Edward Eggleston presents briefly and in a 
masterly way the conditions that led to the plant- 
ing of English colonies in America, among others 
especially that at Jamestown, Virginia. He 
points out that printing was yet a novelty, an art 
and mystery not yet become common, that the 
New World was still a land of wonders with all 
the fascination of the unknown, that the then re- 
cent reformation in religion had made men enter- 
prising in their ideas and ready to entertain new 
theories, that it was an age of creation in litera- 
ture and science, that bold men everywhere were 
ready for deeds of daring. 

Books of travel were plentiful and were eagerly 
read, and men were ready to believe without in- 
quiry whatever was told about the little known 
parts of the world and especially about America. 

86 



THE VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA 87 

It must not be forgotten, in reading about the 
expeditions to the New World, that even in John 
Smith's time it was firmly believed a passage to 
India might exist in some strait between the At- 
lantic and Pacific oceans ; and, as Eggleston says, 
" the hope of coming by some short cut into a rich 
commerce with the Orient led to a prying explo- 
ration of all the inlets, bays, and estuaries on the 
American coast, and so promoted discovery; but 
it retarded settlement by blinding men to the 
value of the New World/' The importance of 
bearing this in mind will appear in discussing the 
instructions given to the leaders of the Virginia 
colonists, and in understanding the blame heaped 
upon some of them for neglecting the search for 
this supposed passage. It is spoken of here be- 
cause the hope of securing commerce with the 
East was a motive leading many merchants and 
rich men to aid projects for expeditions across 
the Atlantic. 

Another motive was found in the wish to get 
rid of a number of poor or idle people of whom 
there had grown to be many in the days of " Good 
Queen Bess '' — though some have named it the 
golden age of English history. One reason for 
the idleness of laborers was the changing of 



88 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

farming-lands into sheep-runs, which threw 
many farm-hands out of work; and there were 
also many unemployed soldiers, who were a dan- 
gerous element in the community; and it was be- 
lieved that colonizing would make a place for 
such men as found no paying employment at 
home. 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert led one expedition to 
America, and landed at Newfoundland ; but when 
he again put to sea, a storm wrecked his vessels, 
and only one survived to carry home the news. 
Sir Walter Raleigh, Gilbert's half-brother, made 
a second attempt, visiting Roanoke Island, giving 
to the new land the name Virginia, and bringing 
back so favorable a report of the country that 
in 1585 seven ships carried colonists out and left 
them there to explore the mainland. These colo- 
nists had trouble with the Indians, and were 
carried home again by Sir Francis Drake, 
bringing with them the first tobacco seen in 
England. 

Raleigh's third expedition was the famous one 
that made a settlement on Roanoke Island, and 
then utterly disappeared— the probability being 
that some were slain and others carried away by 
the Indians. For many years sutceeding colo- 



THE VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA 89 

nists were seeking vainly some trace of this '' lost 
colony." 

Next, in 1602, while Captain Smith was in 
Europe fighting the Turks, Bartholomew Gos- 
nold had crossed the ocean and landed on Cape 
Cod; but, deciding that his provisions were too 
low to support a colony, he had returned, bringing 
a cargo of sassafras and reporting the discovery 
of a shorter route to Virginia than the more 
southerly route by the West Indies. 

Then Gosnold became eager to bring about the 
formation of a company to aid him in establish- 
ing a colony ; and among others he interested Ed- 
ward Maria Wingfield and Captain Smith in his 
plans. They gladly aided him, but it was not 
until 1606 that they had secured the help of men 
of means and influence who were able to fit out an 
expedition, though the King had granted them 
a charter a year before. This charter was es- 
pecially careful to arrange for the government of 
the colony when it should be established, and kept 
the appointment of its ofiicers in the King's 
hands, putting the colonists under control of a 
commercial corporation at home, an appointed 
council in America, a superior council in Eng- 
land, besides the rule of the King; in short, they 



90 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

were almost bound hand and foot with red tape 
before they had even crossed the ocean. 

As if to make sure of trouble, the King's in- 
structions and the appointments of the governors 
were delivered to the members of the expedition 
in a sealed box which they were forbidden to open 
till they came to Virginia. 

They had three vessels, the Susan Constant, 
the Godspeed, and the Discovery— oi one hun- 
dred, forty, and twenty tons, respectively. We 
may gain an idea of the size of these transatlantic 
ships by comparing them with the weight of the 
" little Gloucester/' the converted yacht in which 
Captain Wainwright fought the Spanish tor- 
pedo-boats off Santiago. The Gloucester is of 
seven hundred and eighty-six tons displacement, 
nearly eight times that of the biggest of these 
three vessels which were to carry the colonists 
over three thousand miles; while the smallest of 
three, the pinnace Discovery of twenty tons, may 
be weighed in comparison with the tiniest mem- 
ber of the American Navy, the torpedo-boat Sti- 
letto of thirty-one tons; though we must remem- 
ber that the modern boats are of steel, and smaller 
in proportion to their weight. Still it can be seen 
what tiny boats made up the colonists' fleet. 



THE VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA 9 1 

December 19, 1606, they attempted to depart, 
but were met by adverse winds and stormy wea- 
ther, so that for six weeks they did not get out 
of sight of England; and during this time their 
clergyman, Robert Hunt, was '' so weak and sick 
that few expected his recovery." Now many sail- 
ors are superstitious about the presence of clergy- 
men on shipboard, and probably there was some 
discontent on this account; for Smith speaks of 
" scandalous imputations against him by some 
few, little better than atheists, of the greatest 
rank among us/' But, despite grumbling, the 
clergyman proved himself a trump, and refused 
to be put ashore, though within but ten or twelve 
miles of his home. Indeed, Smith gives Hunt 
credit for bringing peace and concord by his ex- 
ample to the already quarrelsome men among the 
company. 

At length, however, the little fleet got away 
and reached the Canary Isles, — where Smith, you 
remember, made his cruise with Captain Mer- 
ham, — and here they watered. There was not 
the slightest use in going so far south, unless to 
refill their water-casks; but it was still the cus- 
tom of seamen to hug the shore as long as pos- 
sible, though thus the colonists doubled the dis- 



92 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

tance they had to sail. Then they crossed to the 
West Indies, with no greater event to record than 
the sight of a meteor or '' blazing star '' which 
was followed by a storm, and on the 23d of 
March came to the island Mattatenio, and next 
day anchored near Dominica, '' a fair island, the 
trees full of sweet and good smells." Here the 
natives came out to the ships in canoes, bringing 
fruits, and cloth from a wrecked Spanish ship, 
which they gladly traded for knives, hatchets, 
beads, and copper jewelry. 

The colonists and sailors went ashore and dis- 
covered a hot spring, in which their commander, 
Captain Newport, boiled a piece of pork. They 
also visited other islands, and encamped upon one 
for a week, and hunted, seeing few natives, and 
viewing those few only in flight from the white 
men. 

April 2 they resumed their voyage among the 
islands, visiting those that seemed attractive, and 
taking note of the strange plants and animals, 
such as wild boars, a bull with spreading horns, 
lizards, and so on. One of the colonists here died 
from heat and over-exertion. 

On the loth of April they sailed away from 
the islands northward; on the 21st there was a 




GEORGE PERCY 

From a portrait in the Virginia Historical Society's 
rooms, Richmond, Virginia 



THE VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA 95 

terrible tempest, and on the 26th they at last 
sighted the coast of Virginia, about one hundred 
and fifty days after leaving London. 

They entered Chesapeake Bay, landed and 
" discovered a little way,'' as says George Percy 
(from whom these particulars are taken), but 
could find '' nothing worth the speaking of but 
fair meadows and goodly tall trees, with such 
fresh water running through the woods as I was 
almost ravished at the sight of." Remember 
they had been at least sixteen days at sea under 
a tropical sun since refilling their water-casks, 
and then you will understand why fresh running 
water looked to them like nectar. 

But meanwhile matters had not been going 
smoothly among the passengers of the exploring 
vessels, and there were factions and quarrels such 
as. Smith remarks, " so commonly attend such 
voyages ''; and at one time— during their stay on 
the island of Nevis— a gallows was made with the 
purpose of hanging Captain Smith, possibly be- 
cause he was accused of a design to make himself 
leader of the expedition, as afterward is said. 
But Smith, as he humorously records, '' could 
not be persuaded to use " the gallows and so the 
execution was given up. 



g6 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Another adds to Percy's account the fact that 
the mariners had missed their reckoning, and 
that RatcHffe, captain of the smallest vessel, was 
so discouraged that he wished to turn about and 
make for England; but a storm arose and drove 
them into Chesapeake Bay. 

They named the first land they saw Cape 
Henry, after King James's eldest son, and there 
anchored. A party of thirty led by Newport, 
Gosnold, and Wingfield went ashore, but were at- 
tacked by Indians, who came creeping on all 
fours from the hills ; and two of the English were 
dangerously wounded, whereupon they fired upon 
the Indians, and then returned to the ship. 



CHAPTER X 

FIRST EXPERIENCES IN VIRGINIA — EXPLORING 
THE JAMES RIVER 

THAT night they opened the sealed box 
wherein they were to discover the names of 
the council to govern the colony — subject to the 
authorities at home. The orders were read, and 
named as council Gosnold, Smith, Wingfield, 
Newport, Ratcliffe, Martin, and Kendall; and 
these were to choose a president to serve one year. 
" Matters of moment were to be examined by a 
jury, but determined by a major part of the coun- 
cil in which the president was to have two " votes. 
This was embarrassing for Captain Smith, 
who was under accusation of mutiny and was in 
custody. How much foundation for the charges 
against him existed we cannot now say; but we 
may well believe that in the absence of any named 
leader, Smith took it upon himself to direct mat- 
ters more than was strictly fair. This, in a long 
voyage, when men's tempers are exasperated by 

97 



9^ CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

sufferings and by close confinement in little space, 
might well make enemies and lead to the dissen- 
sions spoken of. No doubt Smith deserved some 
punishment, or he would not have been so treated. 

On the 13th of May, after settling a difference 
of opinion between Wingfield and Gosnold, they 
chose the site for their settlement, and then the 
members of the council were sworn, except 
Smith, and upon Wingfield's being elected presi- 
dent, he made a speech explaining why Smith was 
excluded from the council. 

Then all took up axes to clear spaces for their 
tents, while the council " contrive the fort.'* 
Some were put to work cutting the felled trees 
into clapboards to send to England when the 
ships returned, some laid out gardens, others 
made nets, while the Indians would make friendly 
visits — being perhaps better disposed since the 
skirmish that had taught them something of the 
power of firearms. 

In reading history such as is taught in schools, 
we are likely to forget the long times of every- 
day labors and minor happenings that come be- 
tween the exciting occurrences we read with so 
much interest. Had we been at this founding of 
Jamestown, we should no doubt have enjoyed the 




INDIAN HOUSES OF THIS PERIOD 
From John White's original drawing, now in the British Museum 



L.ofC. 



FIRST DAYS IN VIRGINIA lOI 

first sight of the New World, the visits of the 
strange natives, the unusual plants and animals, 
the thickly grown woods and thickets of the wil- 
derness, the abundance of birds. But when it 
came to the felling of great trees, the splitting of 
thick logs, the dragging of heavy branches, the 
cooking, washing, cleaning — then we might well 
be glad we came later, and rejoice that our land 
is already settled, and that we live in softer times. 
" On the seven and twentieth day of April," 
says George Percy, a younger brother of the 
Duke of Northumberland, and a volunteer in the 
expedition, " we began to build up our shallop," 
a strong boat fitted to navigate the rivers. It 
was launched the next day, and used to explore 
the shores of the bay and the watercourses run- 
ning into it. The first river on the south proved 
too shallow for even small boats, and they landed 
on a sandy shoal " five miles in compass without 
either bush or tree," and there found a great ca- 
noe or pirogue, forty-five feet long and hollowed 
from a single tree, besides oysters and mussels 
" as thick as stones," and many containing pearls. 
At another place Percy tells of finding strawber- 
ries " four times bigger and better than ours in 
England," as he puts it. Their next attempt to find 



I02 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

a watercourse was more successful, as the sound- 
ing-line showed that the second river (that after- 
ward named James River) was from forty to 
eighty feet deep. Pleased by this good fortune, 
they named the cape near by '^ Cape Comfort." 
It is still known by the name they gave — being 
Old Point Comfort. 

Within a day or two afterward they saw sav- 
ages on that point, and made friends with them, 
learning that the place was by them called '' Ke- 
coughtan." With these natives and others round- 
about they had some friendly intercourse, but 
naturally both parties were suspicious, and sev- 
eral times a battle was narrowly avoided. 

It would be interesting to repeat young Percy's 
account of the land and people, but since Cap- 
tain Smith was all this time in confinement, these 
observations do not directly concern him, and 
therefore cannot be set forth here; they belong 
rather to the general history of the colony than to 
the life of the English captain. 

Next to providing themselves with habitations 
and food, it was necessary for the colonists to 
know something more of the land about them. 
So Newport and Captain Smith, with about 
twenty companions, were sent to explore the deep 



FIRST DAYS IN VIRGINIA IO3 

river the boat-party had found. Very Hkely the 
president of the council, Wingfield, was glad to 
have Smith busy and away from the settlement, 
but there is no justice in the suggestion that he 
had any hope that there would be trouble with 
the Indians so that Smith would come to grief. 
Wingfield did not think there was likelihood of 
dangers from the natives, for they had seemed so 
friendly that Wingfield even opposed the build- 
ing of a strong fort as a waste of labor, and was 
inclined to be satisfied with a mere breastwork of 
branches which had been thrown together by 
Kendall, one of the council. 

Captain Newport was in command of the boat 
expedition, and the explorers proceeded without 
danger for six days, passing small Indian towns, 
and meeting with much kindness from the In- 
dians along the shores. 

The river expedition used the small sail-boat, 
the shallop, much like a large sloop, and this was 
well provisioned for the journey into unknown 
regions. The party comprised fourteen sailors, 
four "mariners'' (probably petty officers), and 
certain '' gentlemen." Captain Newport's re- 
solve was to find the head of the river which he 
believed to flow from a lake, the mountains 



I04 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

'' Apalatsi " (Appalachian range), or "the sea 
again/' 

They left at noonday, and by night had made 
eighteen miles, which brought them to a meadow 
where the Indians were friendly and entertained 
them by dancing. Here they anchored for the 
night, and next day made another sixteen miles 
before coming to an islet where they found tur- 
keys and blackbirds, and made a meal. Eight 
savages came up in a canoe, and being hailed 
by the word "Wingapoh! "'—a "word of kindness 
the explorers had learned '' — came ashore. Sign- 
talk followed, and an Indian began to draw with 
his foot a map of the river. Pen and paper were 
offered, and he completed for the white men a 
sketch of the river's course from the bay upward 
as far as the boats could go. The same kindly 
fellow brought them some dried oysters after- 
ward, and induced other Indians to bring nuts, 
fruits, and grain. Twenty-two miles farther 
were made that night, and they slept on their 
vessel. 

The following day they discovered that their 
Indian friend had sent word of their coming, and 
they were kindly received everywhere, especially 
by one chief, or " werowance," named Arahatec, 



FIRST DAYS IN VIRGINIA I05 

who fed Captain Newport on deer's-meat, and 
presented to him his crown or head-dress of deer- 
hair dyed red. As they sat thus, seeing their 
dances and taking tobacco, suddenly news arrived 
that ^' Powhatan,'' to whom this smaller chief was 
subject, was come, whereupon all rose to greet 
him, save the chief and his white guests, and the 
explorers presented to the new-comer penny 
knives, beads, and so on. 

From here the explorers secured their friend, 
the map-maker, as a guide, and went onward, 
greeted by clusters of kindly natives on the shore ; 
and '' thinking the ten miles they made to be 
scarce five because of the pleasure and joy they 
took of their kind entertainment,'' they came to 
Powhatan's town, which was separated from the 
river by a garden wherein, they tell us, the Indians 
raised " wheat, beans, pease, tobacco, pumpkins, 
gourds, hemp, flax, etc." (leaving one to wonder 
what the and-so-forth could cover!). 

The settlement had no very great extent, con- 
sisting of twelve houses. But it was a larger 
place than this number would seem to indicate, 
as the Indian houses were big barn-like struc- 
tures framed of branches and covered with bark 
slabs, meant to contain several families. A pas- 



i06 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

sage ran through the middle, and at the sides, 
built Hke stalls, were the families' apartments. 
Fires were built in the center, and thus warmed 
the separate rooms. 

Powhatan, the town, was upon a hill near the 
river, and opposite it were three fertile islands 
and about it were the corn-fields where maize 
grew. " Of this place the people were called 
Powhatans, and the chief, Powhatan,'' we are 
told. But really, as we now know, the great 
chief's name was Wahunsunakok, though, in ac- 
cordance with the Indians' custom, this name 
was never used and was concealed, the supersti- 
tion being that an enemy knowing one's name 
would thereby have power to work mischief to its 
owner. 

They were led up the hill and received kindly 
by the chief they believed to be Powhatan, be- 
side whom sat Arahatec, and another (probably 
a medicine-man). "Powhatan" succeeded in 
making them understand something of the tribes 
bordering on the river, one side of which was held 
by his friends and allies, while there was another 
tribe hostile to him. The English seized the op- 
portunity to vow that the same foes had also at- 
tacked them, and thus united the friendly alliance 



FIRST DAYS IN VIRGINIA 107 

with Powhatan and his alHes that the King of- 
fered. To seal the treaty the Indian presented 
his gown to Captain Newport, and pronounced 
" the most kind words of salutation that may be " 
— which were these, '' Win gap oh chemiize!'' 

Then they took their departure and resumed 
the journey up the river, accompanied by six In- 
dians, in hostage for whom they left one of their 
comrades, and rowed some three miles, and there 
came upon falls which stopped their further prog- 
ress. These falls are on the site of the city of 
Richmond. At this they rejoiced, because they 
w^ere eager to finish their expedition, but were 
grieved also because they had some hope that 
they might be upon a strait leading into the Pa- 
cific—an idea they had read from some of the 
signs made by the kindly Indian who had made 
them a map. 

On the way back they picked up their hostage, 
who had been treated with all honor and kind- 
ness, and rewarded the chief by a feast of boiled 
pork and peas. Certain of their goods having 
been stolen by the Indians, the chief caused all 
to be restored, and made what amends he could. 

The English tried to persuade the Indians to 
conduct them by foot into the country beyond the 



I08 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

falls, but were discouraged by the Indians' advice 
and by reports of hostile tribes further inland. 
So they gave up their plan, deeming it v\^iser to 
keep on good terms with the natives than to ex- 
plore further; but they set up a cross inscribed 
" lacobus Rex, 1607," to claim the river for King 
James. Seeing their Indian guide's curiosity, 
they told him that the two arms of the cross stood 
for King Powhatan and Captain Newport, and 
the tying of them signified their alliance, " which 
cheered him not a little '' ! 

On meeting Powhatan on their return, the 
guide repeated this story, much to the chief's 
pleasure, and they parted with mutual good will. 
King Arahatec, however, had suffered from the 
liquor they had given him, and it was some time 
before he could join them in another banquet on 
deer's-meat, first roasted and then boiled in their 
usual fashion. After dinner there were exhibi- 
tions of mimic warfare by both Indians and white 
men, and the natives were astounded to see and 
hear the effect of the strangers' firearms. 

Next they visited an Indian queen, a fat woman 
of great dignity, and afterward the Chief Ope- 
chancanough, who " so set his countenance striv- 
ing to be stately as to our seeming he became a 



FIRST DAYS IN VIRGINIA IO9 

fool," and who appeared to them to be rich in 
copper and " pearls "—though the latter were 
probably wampum. When they had gone a little 
way, their Indian guide left them, though he was 
invaluable as an interpreter, and they made the 
best of their way down to the fort, for fear some 
disaster might have overtaken the settlement. 

Upon reaching their companions, they learned 
that the Indians had made an attack in force 
while the settlers were quietly at work, with their 
weapons stowed away in " dry fats," that is, vats 
or boxes. The attack might have destroyed the 
whole party, except that by a lucky shot from the 
ships a big bough was cut from a tree and fell 
among the redmen, putting them to flight. By 
the attack a boy in the pinnace was killed, and 
seventeen men wounded; but it had the good 
effect of showing President Wingfield the sav- 
ages were dangerous, and he gave his consent to 
strengthening the fort by palisades, and orga- 
nizing and drilling the settlers. A few men were 
shot at from ambuscades, and there were alarms 
for a week, but no determined attack followed. 

These days were toilsome, since in building the 
fort, mounting the cannon, guarding the workers 
from attack, watching at night, felling trees. 



no CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

loading the vessels for the return voyage, pre- 
paring the ground for corn, there v^as enough 
and to spare of tasks for all of the colonists, who 
numbered little more than a hundred. Of these 
fifty-five ranked as " gentlemen,'' four were boys, 
and of the rest twelve were " footmen that never 
did know what a day's work was." Later, Cap- 
tain Smith declared that " a hundred good work- 
men were worth a thousand such gallants," or 
dandies. 

Meanwhile, Newport decided that it was time 
he began the return voyage to England; a de- 
cision that may have been welcomed by the colo- 
nizers, since his men — the sailors — helped to eat 
up the scanty and half-spoiled barley that formed 
the colonists' main food, and idled about collect- 
ing what they hoped was gold-dust, though it 
proved to be merely powdered mica. But before 
the fleet left there was a matter to be settled. 

Captain Smith was still kept from his place in 
the council under the accusation of mutiny; and 
now his accusers— principally Wingfield— de- 
clared that they did not mean to be hard upon 
him, but would report him to the council in Eng- 
land for a " check " or reproval, instead of pun- 
ishing him further. 



FIRST DAYS IN VIRGINIA I I I" 

Smith would not consent to this, and he de- 
manded trial upon all their charges, and ^' so 
well demeaned himself," as was written later by 
another hand, " as all the company did see his in- 
nocence and his adversaries' malice; and those 
suborned [hired] to accuse him, accused his ac- 
cusers of subornation [hiring false testimony]." 
There was a complete change of sentiment toward 
him, and President Wingfield was condemned to 
pay Smith damages for the false accusation, in 
the sum of two hundred pounds, an amount equal 
to something like four or five times as much to- 
day. Then all Wingfield's property was seized in 
satisfaction of the judgment, and made over to 
Captain Smith. But Smith was too wise, or too 
noble, to retain it, and handed all over for the 
general store of the colony. 

Hard feelings sprang from the trial and its 
results, but by the peace-making efforts of the 
preacher. Master Hunt, all were reconciled, and 
then Smith was admitted to his place in the coun- 
cil. Thereupon peace was confirmed by all going 
to church together and attending a celebration 
of the communion. On the next day messages 
were received from the Indians desiring peace, 
and Captain Newport, having made all prepara- 



112 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

tions, weighed anchor and sailed down the bay 
for the voyage to England, leaving the colony ap- 
parently in a fair state of prosperity. It was 
then the month of June, 1607, they had the sum- 
mer before them, were fairly well fortified, and 
were at peace among themselves and with the 
Indians. 



CHAPTER XI 

FAILURE OF THE FOOD SUPPLY — ATTEMPTS TO 
TRADE WITH THE INDIANS 

AFTER Newport and his sailors left for Eng- 
^ land the hard times began, for so long as 
the ships with their stores had remained the sail- 
ors would barter their own biscuit (hardtack) 
and sea-stores for " money, sassafras, furs, or 
love." When the colonists were left to their own 
resources they had no regular rations but wheat 
and barley that had been some half-year in the 
hold of the ships and was wormy and spoiled ; and 
even of this there was but half a pint for each 
man a day. It was boiled into a mess, and being 
hardly more than bran contained little nourish- 
ment. 

Added to the bad food, the men were forced to 
watch against Indian attacks, and thus had too 
little sleep. " Our drink was water, our lodgings, 
castles in the air,'' they write, by which Arber, 
the editor of Smith's book, declares, it is meant 

113 



114 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

that they slept in trees. Meanwhile they were in 
a marshy place beside the river, and were forced 
to labor hard in driving palisades about their 
fort, despite the heat. Naturally, the poor fel- 
lows, many being unused to hardship of any kind, 
broke down under it, and fell sick. Young Percy 
gives the fullest account of the miseries of this 
time. He says, '' There were never Englishmen 
left in a foreign country in such misery as we 
were in this newly discovered Virginia." There 
at their feet was the river water, which at high 
tide was salt from the inflowing sea water, and at 
low tide '' full of slime and filth, which was the 
destruction of many of our men, for they drank 
of it." 

From August, 1607, to the beginning of 1608, 
they had not five healthy men to man their for- 
tress in case of an attack. The men lay about the 
fort, groaning day and night, *' most pitiful to 
hear." They died, sometimes three or four in a 
night, and if the Indians had attacked them all 
would have been slain almost without resistance. 
But the alliance with the chiefs had been a wise 
policy, for the friendly Indians had threatened to 
make war upon the hostile tribes if these dis- 
turbed the English. 



FAILURE OF FOOD, AND TRADING II 5 

Greetings came to the settlement, three days 
after Newport sailed, from *' the great Pow- 
hatan,'' who lived ten miles away on the Pa- 
munkey River ; for it seems that the other Indian, 
called " Powhatan '' by Newport, the one he had 
met during the boat expedition, was only an in- 
ferior chieftain. But the friendly treaty made 
with him was now ratified by the greater chief, 
and to this the colony owed its freedom from at- 
tack during its helpless state, which, indeed, was 
carefully hidden from the Indians by excluding 
them from the town. 

There was little chance of recovery when once 
any fell sick ; and during August the deaths were 
unceasing, while the living were scarcely able to 
bury the dead. Nearly half of them were gone 
by September, and there was among the sur- 
vivors so much dissatisfaction with their presi- 
dent that it was resolved to depose him. He was 
accused of having withheld from the men and 
reserved for his private use certain of the stores ; 
but it is at least certain that he had not made a 
good manager, and, as Smith says, " he had 
ordered the affairs in such sort that he was gen- 
erally hated of all." A vote was taken, Wingfield 
was removed as president, and also from the 



Il6 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

council, and Captain Ratcliffe was elected in his 
place. 

Bartholomew Gosnold, the originator of the 
whole expedition, was among those who had died, 
and he, too, had been a member of the council; 
so King James's device for governing the colony 
was pretty well broken down within a few weeks 
after their landing, and three men. Smith, Mar- 
tin, and Ratcliffe were managing the colony. 

In a new country the real rulers will be the 
men who can do things ; and the Virginians were 
gradually learning who was their true leader, as 
by the test of adversity the unfit were one by one 
set aside. It is not necessary that we should judge 
too harshly either Wingfield or his enemies. It 
was a trying time, when all their lives were at 
stake, and we cannot blame Wingfield for trying 
to carry out his instructions, nor his adversaries 
for believing they could manage better than he 
had done. It is pitiful to read their squabblings, 
which seem like the snarling of hungry dogs over 
a bone, and it is enough to record the fact that 
Wingfield gladly gave up his office, was impris- 
oned in the pinnace under guard, and Ratcliffe, 
the new president, undertook to administer 
afifairs. 



FAILURE OF FOOD, AND TRADING I I 7 

But, to the general joy of the starving men, 
there now arrived rehef from the friendly In- 
dians, who carried in food just as the shoals of 
fish on which the colonists had been living had left 
the waters near the settlement, and their remain- 
ing provisions were not sufficient for more than 
three weeks. Strengthened by this timely aid, 
the men set to work once more to make them- 
selves a home. 

The president, Ratcliffe, and Martin, " being 
little beloved, of weak judgment in dangers, and 
less industry in peace, committed the managing 
of all things abroad [that is, out of doors, as 
Arber explains] to Captain Smith, who by his 
own example, good words, and fair promises set 
some to mow, others to bind thatch, some to build 
houses, others to thatch them, himself always 
bearing the greater task for his own share, so 
that in a short time he provided many of them 
lodgings, neglecting any for himself.'* So say 
the others; while Smith himself says that the 
sickness of Ratcliffe and Martin forced him to 
take charge of all the stores, " and yet to spare 
no pains in making houses for our little company ; 
who notwithstanding our misery little ceased 
their malice, grudging, and muttering." 



Il8 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

But the relief brought by the Indians did not 
last long, and it became necessary to go farther 
afield to secure larger stores. Smith decided to 
take their boat — the shallop already mentioned — 
and to visit the friendly Indian village at Ke- 
coughtan, near the mouth of the river, hoping to 
catch fish or find supplies. 

There could be few men spared for the expedi- 
tion, only six or seven in all, and these were igno- 
rant of the language of the natives, ill-clad, and 
too weak to fight their way. They soon found 
that they need expect little consideration; for on 
arriving at the Indian town, their offers to trade 
were treated with derision, the natives pretend- 
ing to be willing to give no more than a handful 
of corn for a sword or musket, or for the white 
men's clothing. Captain Smith '' in like scorn 
offered them like commodities ; but the children," 
he says, " or any who showed extraordinary kind- 
ness, I liberally contented with free gifts of such 
trifles as '' pleased them. Then he anchored, and 
next day tried again to trade, but with like re- 
sult; whereupon he lost his patience. For it is 
ill joking with hungry men ; and when Smith had 
seen that diplomacy and sweet words were not 
likely to bring out any provisions, he " let fly his 



FAILURE OF FOOD, AND TRADING II 9 

muskets," and followed the roar of the firearms 
by running his boat ashore to attack the village. 

This argument was at least effective in dis- 
posing of the Indians, who took to the woods, 
leaving their village and their heaped-up stores 
of grain at the disposal of the white visitors. 
The others wished to help themselves to the 
provisions ; but Smith was an old soldier, and in- 
sisted that the enemy would soon return in 
force. Luckily his advice was taken. 

For not long afterward came sixty or seventy 
savages in war-paint, " black, white and parti- 
colored," in a solid square, singing, dancing, and 
marching under the protection of their " Okee 
(which was an idol made of skins, stuffed with 
moss, all painted and hung with chains and cop- 
per)." With bows and arrows, clubs and shields 
they charged the English, but were received by a 
volley of grape-shot— pistol-bullets shot from 
muskets. The savages again fled, leaving a num- 
ber of wounded on the field, and abandoning their 
Okee to the English invaders. 

The loss of the Okee brought the superstitious 
Indians to submission. They sent messengers to 
ask for peace; and Captain Smith granted them 
the right to return to their village on condition 



I20 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

that they would send six unarmed men to load 
the boat with corn, for which he also promised 
to make full payment in beads, copper, and 
hatchets. 

This mixture of bullying with justice won 
their savage hearts, and " they brought him veni- 
son, turkeys, wild-fowl, bread, and what they 
had,'' singing and dancing in sign of friendship 
till the English departed from this rather excit- 
ing expedition to market. On their way home 
they fell in with another tribe of Indians, the 
Warraskoyacks (to adopt one of three differing 
spellings), on the southern bank of the James, — 
two of their canoes being met in the river, — and 
from these secured further supplies, so that Smith 
brought back to the settlement nearly thirty 
bushels of corn, which with good management 
ought to have put them beyond all immediate 
need. 

But good management was precisely the 
quality that was lacking. The men in charge 
were the " gentlemen,'' the very men who were 
not used to looking sharply after practical mat- 
ters; sailors who knew nothing of getting their 
living out of the soil ; and generally those used to 
having their living provided for by others. It 



FAILURE OF FOOD, AND TRADING 121 

was natural that Captain Smith, the runaway 
prentice, sailor, soldier, farmer, adventurer, and 
Jack-of-all-trades, should come to the front, and 
sweep away the cobwebs of red tape that would 
have strangled the infant colony in its cradle. 

He knew the Indians had corn, and he meant 
to get it, peaceably if he could, forcibly if he 
must. With the pinnace and the shallop he 
sailed up and down the rivers, offering iron 
chisels — the only commodity of which the Eng- 
lish had plenty — for food to keep his companions 
alive. These iron chisels were of the utmost value 
to the Indians, since their tools and weapons were 
of shell and bone and stone. 

But from the nearer tribes they could not get 
enough food for their wants; so when they had 
provisions ahead for only two weeks, it was de- 
cided to fit up the boats for an expedition to Pow- 
hatan, further up the James River. All three 
of the leading m.en of the settlement, Smith, Rat- 
cliffe, and Martin, had been sick like the rest; but 
Smith was entirely restored to health, and the 
others were able to be about; so they felt that 
they could spare the men for the expedition, espe- 
cially since they now had cabins in which to 
shelter themselves at night, and their fort had 



122 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

long been completed and mounted with cannon 
ready to repulse any attack. 

Lots being drawn to decide the commanding of 
the expedition, Captain Smith was chosen, and 
while the rigging of the boats was in progress he 
continued his trading with their Indian neigh- 
bors, making a trip to the Toppahannock country, 
which lay east of Jamestown, and was reached by 
ascending the river Rappahannock. But there 
were only women and children in the town when 
the English arrived, and there was nobody at 
home when they landed, for there was a hasty 
scampering to the sheltering woods by these de- 
fenseless natives. Smith succeeded in persuading 
them to return, but to no purpose, as they dared 
not trade. As he says, " truck [trade] they durst 
not; corn they had plenty; and to spoil [rob] I 
had no commission." He was therefore forced 
to depart empty-handed, sailing down the river 
again to Chesapeake Bay, and attempting on the 
way home to get corn from the Paspahegh In- 
dians—the " treacherous and churlish '' natives 
who had already given the colonists so much 
trouble. From them he secured ten or twelve 
bushels, but while loading their boat with this 
grain the Indians tried to steal the English- 



FAILURE OF FOOD, AND TRADING I 23 

men's muskets and swords, which nearly led to a 
battle. 

After such an experience the English kept 
these natives at a distance, allowing only a few 
to come near to trade. As night came on, seeing 
they were followed along the river-bank. Smith 
deemed it prudent to run no risk of an attack, and 
so returned to the fort without more than the ten 
bushels already secured. 



CHAPTER XII 

CAPTAIN SMITH IS CAPTURED BY THE 
INDIANS 

YET the food secured with so much trouble 
was by " the rest carelessly spent," and the 
need for the voyage to the Powhatan country was 
as urgent as ever. There was a tributary of the 
James leading northward and westward, the 
Chickahominy River, and Smith resolved to ex- 
plore it, and for this purpose went with eight men 
in the barge, as the smaller boat was fitter for 
shoal water, while the pinnace with seven men 
was to follow in order to act as freight-carrier 
or base of supplies. On the 9th of November, 
1607, ^he barge or shallop started. The pinnace 
awaited the next tide, having been ordered to 
go as far as Point Weanock, some twenty miles 
from Jamestown, there to await the shallop's 
return. 

Smith, by afternoon, had reached Paspahegh 

Bay, which is shown on his map not far above 

124 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS 1 25 

Weanock, and there remained during ebb-tide; 
here he was fortunate to meet one of the Chicka- 
hominy Indians, who offered to act as guide, in 
spite of the objections of the Paspaheghs (who 
seem to have been the only Indians in the region 
with sense enough to oppose the white invaders 
at every turn— wherefore they were called 
" churHsh and treacherous'' by the colonists). 
By moonlight the journey was made, and they 
came to the town of their friendly guide, and 
one of the English going to visit the town by 
invitation was kindly entertained. Next morn- 
ing Captain Smith also made a visit, taking with 
him copper and hatchets, and showing the In- 
dians what advantages they might gain by 
trading. 

There was great eagerness to trade, a hundred 
Indians at one time bringing corn to the river- 
bank; but Captain Smith showed his shrewdness 
by not seeming too eager. He bought what he 
could, and then proceeded up the river, visiting 
the towns Manosquosick, a large settlement of 
thirty or forty houses, Oraniocke, Mansa, Apa- 
naock, Werawahone, and finally Mamanahunt, 
being kindly received at all, " especially at the 
last, being the heart of the country, where were 



126 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

assembled two hundred people with such abun- 
dance of corn as, having loaded our barge, I also 
might have laded a ship." 

Then the Englishmen, considering the want of 
provisions at home, returned with the ebbing tide 
to find the pinnace aground— most things in the 
colony did " run aground " unless Smith was 
there to keep them afloat— and '' unladed seven 
hogsheads into our store." 

The reader, seeing how much corn the Indians 
could spare and with how little trouble they 
seemed to live, will be likely to wonder why the 
colonists had suffered so for lack of food ; and the 
colonists themselves felt that this question would 
be asked at home. They made their defense in 
the " Oxford tract," or, as it is called on the title- 
page, " The Proceedings of the English Colony 
in Virginia," published at Oxford in 1612. They 
say the council at home were not to blame, since 
" the fault of our going was our own. What 
could be thought fitting or necessary, we had ; but 
what we should find, what we should want, where 
we should be, we were all ignorant. And sup- 
posing to make our passage in two months with 
victual to live and the advantage of the spring to 
work, we were at sea five months, where we both 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS I27 

spent our victual and lost the opportunity of the 
time and season to plant." 

This time was lost by going around by the 
Canary Islands, and thus doubling the journey 
across the ocean; an unnecessary proceeding, as 
Bartholomew Gosnold's voyage to Cape Cod had 
already proved. But Newport was captain, Gos- 
nold only a passenger, and so the time was lost; 
and after their belated landing in Virginia, Gos- 
nold's life was one of the penalties paid for the 
neglect of his example. The fault was New- 
port's, though Gosnold was the sacrifice. Prob- 
ably Newport was afraid of the northern latitude 
in a winter voyage, for it must be remembered 
they had sailed in December, and it was not until 
May they had landed, and then had no time to 
prepare for planting. 

During Captain Smith's absence a conspiracy 
had been formed, Wingfield and Kendall being 
accused of it, to seize the pinnace that lay near 
the shore, already provisioned for the voyage, 
and to escape in her to England. 

This conspiracy was discovered through a 
quarrel that arose between Ratcliffe and one 
James Read, the blacksmith of the colony. The 
president of the council had reproved the black- 



128 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

smith for some fault, and had beaten him, 
whereupon the tradesman returned the blows, or 
attempted to do so ; and as the president was con- 
sidered an officer and representative of the King, 
this insubordination was considered high trea- 
son, and the tradesman was condemned to be 
hanged. 

The council, according to Wingfield's account, 
were accustomed to beat and whip the settlers, 
and no doubt felt their only safety against them 
was in severity of discipline. At all events, the 
gallows was erected, the blacksmith was about to 
be executed, when he begged leave to speak pri- 
vately to the president. The request granted, the 
conspiracy was revealed, and then Kendall, being 
brought to trial, was by a jury condemned as 
ringleader and was shot. The narrative is not 
entirely clear just here, but it seems that upon the 
revealing of their guilt the conspirators seized 
the pinnace and attempted, at about the time of 
Smith's return, to sail away. The guns of the 
fort were turned on the vessel, and, either by 
threats or by force, the pinnace was held, Kendall 
secured, tried, condemned, and executed. An- 
other attempt to abandon the colony was made by 
Wingfield and Archer, by means of a resolution 
put to vote, but this more legal attack also was 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS 1 29 

met by Smith with equal decision and prompt- 
ness, Martin aiding him, and the colony was 
again saved from ruin. 

Let us pause for a moment to recall one by one 
the names of the seven councilors appointed by 
the King, and to see what six months had re- 
vealed in regard to their characters and capabili- 
ties for governing. The first was Newport. He 
had almost ruined the colony at the beginning by 
insisting upon the old route over the sea, and he 
was now absent seeking supplies in England. 
Second, Gosnold, who fell sick, and died on the 
226. of August. Third, Wingfield, incompetent, 
deposed, and accused of treachery— perhaps with 
good cause. Fourth, John Smith, again and 
again the savior of the colony by wisdom, en- 
terprise, pluck, and fair dealing, for which his 
reward so far had been — suspicion, imprison- 
ment, grumbling, distrust, and the heavy end of 
every enterprise. Fifth, Ratcliffe, weak, over- 
bearing, quarrelsome, and with worse to follow. 
Sixth, Martin, a man useless through invalidism, 
and of little force when well. Seventh, Kendall, 
a mischief-maker and intriguer always, and at 
last a detected traitor, and shot as a felon. 

If Captain Smith did presume a little on his 
ability to manage affairs, shall we blame him? 



130 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

And it must not be forgotten that the accounts 
of all the parties have been consulted in making 
up this estimate of the individual value of the 
colonists' officials. 

The pressing question, as usual, was the food- 
supply. " The Spaniard never more greedily de- 
sired gold than Smith victual; nor his soldiers 
more to abandon the colony than he to keep it." 
The '*' victual " was procured from the dwellers 
on the Chickahominy, and, besides, at the ap- 
proach of winter there were wild fowl in plenty 
on the rivers, and " divers sort of wild beasts as 
fat as we could eat them,'' and prospects seemed 
to brighten. They began to think of Newport's 
return, and desired to have some good news for 
him. So the council urged Smith to renew his 
exploration of the Chickahominy, and even ar- 
gued that he need not have turned back so soon 
— that " he had been too slow in so worthy an 
attempt." 

Smith was not likely to take this '' dare," and 
he might have retorted that his returns from each 
of his former expeditions had been just in the 
nick of time to save those left at home from ruin. 
But he has satisfied himself by the insertion of a 
good-humored joke in his memoirs. He writes 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS I3I 

that, now there was such plenty to eat, " none of 
our tuftataffaty humorists desired to go for 
England/' This needs a word of explanation. 
" Tuftataffaty " is for " tufty-taffety," that is, in 
ragged velvet, from tuft-taffeta or tufted taffeta, 
and hence means " ragged " or '' shabby gen- 
teel " ; while '' humorists " means " fanciful " or 
'' full of notions " ; so we might, putting the sen- 
tence into our own way of speaking, say : " So 
long as there was something to fill their mouths, 
these scatter-brained, shabby-genteel dandies 
were willing to stay/' This meaning of the 
words is given by Simms in his life of Smith, and 
he quotes from the old poet Donne some lines in 
which the word is used in the same sense: 

"Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been 
Velvet, but 't was now become tufftaffaty/' 

These fine gentlemen in rags, now well fed and 
well housed, began to think it would have been 
easy to go much farther than Smith had done; 
in fact, they could not see why he had not made 
his way right through the continent of America 
and into the ocean on the other side. They would 
have done it, except that they had not been feel- 



132 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

ing well ; and even Smith might have gone to the 
head of the Chickahominy, they suggested. 

Smith, willing to oblige and, probably, prefer- 
ring to get out into the wilderness, where at 
least he was free from the continual whining and 
criticism, got together his expeditionary force 
and left the colonists to their eating, squabbling, 
and grumbling. 

He went about forty miles up the river, finding 
fertile lands on both banks and seeing a profu- 
sion of wild fowl, and came to a marshy district 
where the river '' united itself," or made a ring- 
loop, at a town called Apocant, '' the highest town 
inhabited.'^ As the water was shallow, the ex- 
plorer now took to the barge and pushed forward 
ten miles, having at one place to chop in two a 
fallen tree that blocked the channel. The width 
here was at high water only some ten feet at most, 
and at low water not more than seven feet— ap- 
parently giving little promise of opening out into 
the ocean that led to India ! Smith had thus sat- 
isfied himself that he was near the head of the 
river ; but he did not mean this time to go back to 
the tuftatafTety gentlemen without being able to 
say that he had made certain of the source of the 
Chickahominy. It was resolved, therefore, to re- 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS 1 33 

turn to Apocant, the only settlement in this wil- 
derness, to leave the barge, and hire a canoe that 
would carry them into the narrowest channels. 
The canoe and two Indians were soon secured, 
and those in the barge, seven men, were ordered 
to remain at anchor in the stream near Apocant, 
while Smith with two companions (Emery and 
Robinson) set forward, paddled by their Indian 
guides, on the pretense of going " a-fowling." 

Evidently Captain Smith did not altogether ap- 
prove of this expedition, for he excuses it by the 
plea that he had been so severely criticized, that 
there was likelihood of coming to some lake near 
by, and that the council in England would expect 
some reports of explorations. Besides, he says 
that the Indians had been friendly, and appa- 
rently the region was an uninhabited wilderness. 

For twenty miles more the canoe was paddled 
along the windings of the narrow stream, finding 
it neither broader nor narrower, but much cum- 
bered with trees, and then, having reached a point 
some twelve miles farther than the barge had 
gone, they went ashore to boil their kettle. While 
Emery and Robinson remained on the river-bank 
with one of the Indians, Captain Smith and the 
other guide made an exploration round about. 



134 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

He had ordered the two men left behind to keep 
a match burning (that is, a fuse, for their guns 
were matchlocks and fired by means of a burning 
fuse), and to fire a shot at the first sight of any 
Indian. 

Within quarter of an hour Smith heard an out- 
cry, and then a hallooing of Indians, but no re- 
port of the matchlock. Suspecting that their 
guides had betrayed them. Captain Smith seized 
the one with him, and fastened a garter around 
the man's arm, twisting the other end around his 
ow^n hand, to prevent the Indian from escaping, 
and with pistol drawn stood ready to shoot the 
guide. But the Indian seemed willing to aid 
Smith to escape, and showed no signs of guilt. 

As they went on through the woods, an arrow 
struck Smith on the right thigh, but without 
harm, perhaps glancing instead of striking 
square; and then, seeing two Indians with their 
bows drawn, Smith fired at them with his pistol, 
preventing the shot. He loaded hastily, and 
three or four more Indians then aimed at him, the 
first two having been scared by the pistol-shot 
and fled. Both parties let fly, and Smith sheltered 
himself behind the guide, " making him my barri- 
cade," the guide not attempting to resist. 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS 13 7 

Twenty or thirty arrows were shot, but fell 
short, the Indians apparently wishing to keep out 
of pistol-range; and Smith also fired three or 
four times without doing much damage. The 
Indians meanwhile kept increasing in number, 
until some two hundred men under Opechanca- 
nough, the Pamunkey chief, had surrounded the 
lonely white man and threatened him with drawn 
bows. They lay on the ground, but did not shoot, 
either because they wished to take him alive, or 
because they feared the pistol— that wonder- 
working weapon — might be turned upon him 
who should discharge an arrow and miss his 
mark. 

Parleying began with the guide. He told the 
attacking party that Smith was the captain of 
the expedition, and that he demanded to be al- 
lowed to return to the boat. They demanded 
Smith's arms, telling him the other two men had 
been killed, but promising to take him prisoner. 
Meanwhile the guide was begging Smith not to 
shoot, and Smith was discreetly backing away. 
But, " minding them more than my steps,'' he 
says, " I stepped fast into the quagmire.'' The 
guide, trying to pull him out, also sank into the 
swampy ground, and Smith saw there was no 



138 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

hope of escaping. He " resolved to try their 
mercies/' and threw his arms from him, for they 
dared not come near so long as he was armed; 
and then he was seized and taken out of the quag- 
mire a captive — where we leave him in safe cus- 
tody while we briefly record the fortunes of the 
seven men left with the barge at Apocant. 

These men paid no attention to their leader's 
orders to remain in the boat, but went ashore soon 
after the canoe was out of sight, perhaps to hunt, 
when they were attacked by the Indians. One 
unfortunate man was captured, and the rest 
barely escaped to their boat. 

The man whom they took was tortured and 
killed, after he had been made to point out the 
direction in which Smith had gone; and the In- 
dians, some three hundred in number, under 
Opechancanough, scouted through the woods 
after the exploring party. Robinson and Emery, 
Smith's companions, being found by their fire, 
were slain by a volley of arrows, and then the 
search went on until Smith fell into their hands. 

At first they treated him with apparent kind- 
ness, rubbing his benumbed arms and legs, — for 
he was " near dead with the cold,"— and bringing 
him to the fire beside which Emery and Robinson 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS 1 39 

had been " shot full of arrows/' Smith, as soon 
as he was able to move freely, demanded which 
was their captain, and was directed to Opechan- 
canough ; and now follows a scene which the crit- 
ics of Smith consider a piece of absurd and wilful 
lying. 

Smith must have told the story, of course, 
since no other white man was there, and as it is 
told it certainly seems on cursory reading incredi- 
ble. It appears in the narrative of Smith himself 
entitled '' A True Relation," and also, with fuller 
detail, in the '' Generall Historic of Virginia.'' 
As Smith recounts the matter in his own book, 
it reads thus : " I presented him with a compass- 
dial, describing by my best means the use 
thereof; whereat he so amazedly admired, as he 
suffered me to proceed in a discourse of the 
roundness of the earth, the course of the sun, 
moon, stars, and planets." In the second account 
this is enlarged as follows: ^^ He gave [him] a 
round, ivory, double compass-dial. Much they 
marveled at the playing of the fly and needle, 
which they could see so plainly and yet not touch 
it because of the glass that covered them. But 
when he demonstrated by that globe-like jewel 
the roundness of the earth and skies, the sphere 



140 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

of the sun, moon, and stars, and how the sun did 
chase the night round about the world continu- 
ally, the greatness of the land and sea, the diver- 
sity of nations, variety of complexions, and how 
we were to them antipodes, and many other such 
like matters, they all stood as amazed with ad- 
miration." 

This passage surely sounds as if Captain Smith 
was saying that he delivered a learned lecture to 
the Indians, and lightly glanced from earth to 
heaven and heaven to earth again, with an ease 
and learning that we should hardly expect from 
one who had but a half-hour before been depen- 
dent upon his guide to interpret to the Indians 
the terms upon which he was willing to surrender. 

Edward Eggleston's general opinion of John 
Smith's veracity is put thus : '' His writings on 
practical questions are terse, epigrammatic, and 
were beyond the wisdom of his time. But where 
his own adventures or credit are involved he is 
hardly more trustworthy than Falstaff.'' Of 
this compass interview Eggleston says : '* The 
apocryphal story of his expounding the solar- 
system by means of a pocket-compass to savages 
whose idiom he had had no opportunity to learn 
is to be found only in his later writings.'' 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS I4I 

This seems hardly a fair statement. '' Ex- 
pounding the solar system '' is hardly what even 
the fuller account represents the captive to have 
done. The compass was not a simple pocket-com- 
pass; it was a '^ round dial-compass," and evi- 
dently a globe in form. Judging from the brief 
description, Smith had a sphere of ivory set with a 
glass cover at each end or pole. In this was a 
" fly,'' or disk, showing both faces. One had a 
compass-needle fixed upon it, and the points of the 
compass marked; the other side was a dial — a 
sun-dial, with the little gnomon, and the hours 
marked upon the disk. This exactly fits the 
words, " a round, ivory, double compass dial." 

The importance of understanding this lies in 
the fact that the possession of such a sphere 
would make the " expounding of the solar-sys- 
tem " a much simpler matter. As to the lan- 
guage. Captain Smith had been in Virginia since 
May 6, 1607, ^^^ i^ was now near the middle of 
December; that is, he had spent over seven 
months in the country, and had been much with 
the Indians, traveling, trading, and exploring. 
They were all of Algonkin stock, and spoke 
either the same language or dialects of it. Is it 
too much to suppose that a traveler, used to ac- 



142 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

quiring the most useful and the most general 
words, had not picked up enough of the language 
to express simple ideas in simple phrases? But 
it may be objected that these ideas were not 
" simple." Let us see. 

" He demonstrated [showed] by [the round- 
ness of] this jewel [this word then meant any 
little trinket or ornament] the roundness of the 
earth and skies, the roundness of the sun, moon, 
and stars." All this required only to make the 
savages see that the shape of all these things was 
like that of the ivory sphere. Mere signs might 
have done nearly as much with a race so alert in 
reading signs as are the American Indians, and 
a few words would at least have shown them his 
meaning. " How the sun did chase the night 
around " would have required nothing more than 
a pebble to represent the sun ; and for the " di- 
versity of nations and variety of complexions " 
the paleface Smith and his dusky captors were 
object-lesson enough. Using the little ivory 
globe as a symbol of the earth, it would not be 
hard for him to mark or touch on its surface the 
positions of his land and theirs, and thus to give 
them the idea that the English came from one 
side while the Indians lived on the opposite. 



CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS 1 43 

Whether the Indians understood him is an- 
other story. At all events, they could see that 
the compass refused to turn with its outer box; 
that they saw, yet could not touch, the inner parts ; 
and they may have believed (as Katharine Woods 
suggests in her very careful biography of John 
Smith) that by means of the powerful medicine 
of his magical ivory " jewel " Smith claimed to 
rule earth, sun, moon, and stars. 

However it may be, there is nothing improb- 
able in the story when read with fair and impar- 
tial judgment ; and we may believe it without con- 
sidering ourselves in any way credulous. It must 
be remembered also that our standards of narra- 
tion are much stricter than those of the seven- 
teenth century. To our notion, everything relating 
to a new country or a savage people may be of 
great importance, and if told at all should be told 
with absolute accuracy ; to their thinking, the im- 
portant thing was to give a good general idea of 
the situation and happening. Besides, there were 
some eight or nine writers concerned in the pro- 
duction of the " Generall Historic of Virginia,'' 
and there would not have been the least scruple 
in revising, editing, or embellishing the narra- 
tive for the purpose of making it more attractive. 



144 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

We see the process even in the pubHshing of 
Shakspere's dramas, which are of the period. 

There are few of Smith's critics who could 
come out as creditably as he, if their writings 
were to be subjected to so strict an examination. 

Let us be at least fair, and grant to Captain 
Smith the same treatment that would be awarded 
a modern explorer or historian. 



CHAPTER XIII 



smith's captivity— he is taken before 
powhatan 



THERE are certain contradictions in the 
story of the colony as told by the various 
colonists, and these will be noticed as they occur. 
But those readers who wish to make a critical ex- 
amination of these matters will find them fully 
treated in books devoted more especially to that 
side of the subject. This book is meant to give 
an idea of Captain Smith and of his doings, and 
will discuss the value of the testimony only 
where that is necessary to decide what statements 
should be considered true, and what need modify- 
ing. There will be stated here as facts only such 
happenings as seem proved by all the evidence, 
and nothing will be inserted knowingly that is 
pure guess-work. 

For instance, the reader will find it told in some 
lives of John Smith that just before he came to 
Virginia, that is, some time in 1605 or 1606, he 

145 



146 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

went on a walking tour into Ireland. It seems 
this statement is based upon a sentence or two in 
Wingfield's narrative of his troubles in the col- 
ony. Here is the passage: 

^' Master Smith in the time of our hunger had 
spread a rumor in the colony that I did feast my- 
self and my servants out of the common store. 
. . . I told him privately in Master Gosnold's 
tent that indeed I had caused half a pint of pease 
to be sodden with a piece of pork, of my own pro- 
vision, for a poor old man, which in a sickness 
(whereof he died) he much desired; and said that 
if out of his malice he had given it out otherwise 
that he did tell a lie. It was proved to his face, 
that he begged in Ireland like a rogue, without a 
license. To such I would not my name should he 
a companion." 

These last two sentences are the foundation 
for the statement about Smith's " walking tour 
in Ireland." But do they refer to Smith at all? 
Look at the accusation : "" that I did feed myself 
and my servants out of the common store." To 
this Wingfield replies : " I gave nothing out of the 
common store, but out of my own provision I 
gave food to a man. He was not a servant or a 
companion of mine, but a poor old man, a fellow 



TAKEN BEFORE POWHATAN 1 47 

who had (as was proved to his face) been a va- 
grant, a beggar without a Hcense in Ireland. He 
should not be called a servant or friend or com- 
panion of mine. I would not be a companion to 
such, and favor them above the rest.'' This in- 
terpretation makes Wingfield's answer a full, 
plain, and categorical denial of the charge in all 
its parts; while to apply the words to Captain 
Smith makes them absurd and unmeaning. It 
was the sick man who was accused of " giving it 
out otherwise through his malice.'' 

There is otherwise no sense in the words " To 
such I would not my name should be a com- 
panion." Wingfield never held himself above 
Smith ; on the contrary, he accuses Smith of hold- 
ing himself above him (Wingfield). He writes 
(in the same document) : " Then start up Master 
Smith, and said I had told him plainly how he 
lied; and that I said, though we were equal here, 
yet, if he were in England, he would think scorn 
his man [i.e., serving-man, as Arber says] should 
be my companion." This is hard to follow, but it 
seems to accuse Smith of " putting on airs " over 
Wingfield, and seems to have no reference to the 
other accusation. Otherwise we should have 
Wingfield speaking of himself in the third person 



148 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

and second person (he, his, my) in the same sen- 
tence. 

Another passage, in which Wingfield is sup- 
posed to speak of Smith as '' the first and only 
practiser in these practices," will, if carefully 
read, be seen to refer to Archer, as is seen from 
Wingfield's speaking of Archer's " being here in 
the Town," that is, London, some time in 1608, 
for Arber dates Wingfield's document in that 
year. Archer came home with Wingfield; 
Smith remained in Virginia till after October, 
1609; ^^^ Wingfield quotes Smith only as saying 
Archer was the ringleader in the plot for his de- 
position. These interpretations agree also with 
Wingfield's general sense; for, as Arber (the 
most careful editor of Smith's writings) says, the 
deposed president " is most bitter against Archer 
and Ratcliffe; while Smith and Martin come in 
least for his complaints." The most careful ex- 
amination of the original text will support these 
readings. 

But " actions speak louder than words," and it 
is time to follow Smith into captivity with Ope- 
chancanough and his warriors. Concerning this 
chief there is a tradition in Virginia that he was 
not by birth one of the same tribe as the great 



TAKEN BEFORE POWHATAN 1 49 

Powhatan, though by some writers said to be his 
elder brother, but that he came from the South- 
west, where he had seen something of the Span- 
iards and had learned to hate the white race. 
Certainly he was never their friend, and in the 
later history of Virginia figures as the fomenter 
of discord and as the contriver of the two great 
Indian uprisings that almost destroyed the power 
of the English in Virginia. These took place 
after Powhatan's death and Opechancanough's 
succession as chief. The novel " To Have and 
To Hold '' gives an admirable account of one of 
these Indian conspiracies. At the time of Smith's 
captivity, however, Powhatan ruled, and Ope- 
chancanough was subject to him. 

However much or little the Indians understood 
of Captain Smith's talk about the compass, there 
seems little doubt that, knowing him to be a pow- 
erful man among the English, they believed him a 
medicine-man or magician, and for this reason 
feared to put him to death or believed they might 
demand a large ransom for his release. 

Smith was tied to a tree, and many Indians 
stood about and drew their bows as if to shoot 
him, when the chief held up the compass-dial and 
they all laid down their bows and arrows. This 



150 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

was probably done to test his courage, or to see 
if he were a true medicine-man; and Smith may 
have owed his Hfe to his courageous bearing 
when thus threatened, though he seems to think 
the chief saved him on account of the magical 
compass. 

A triumphal procession was drawn up, the 
chief ordering the captured weapons to be car- 
ried before him, while the captain was conducted 
in his wake by three savages who held him by his 
arms. On each side were warriors with drawn 
bows and arrows on the strings, and in this order 
the long file wound through the woods until it 
came to Oropaks, a cluster of thirty or forty 
" hunting-houses," or wigwams. The squaws and 
children rushed out to meet the warriors and 
stare at the captive, and then the war party '' per- 
formed the form of a Bishion [or bissone]," 
which seems to have been a sort of drill or war- 
dance, since the minor chiefs were on each flank 
" to see they kept their orders.'' The warriors 
next formed a ring and danced, with yelling and 
singing. " All this while Smith and the king 
stood in the middest, guarded, as before is said, 
and after three dances they all departed.'' The 
captive was now taken to a long house, and bread 



TAKEN BEFORE POWHATAN I5I 

and venison were offered him; but he admits 
that because of his uneasiness his appetite was 
not very good, — which a braggart might have 
thought not worth mentioning, — and also re- 
cords his suspicion that they might be feeding 
him up so that he would be the daintier morsel 
for a cannibal feast. 

Among the Indians guarding him was one to 
whom Smith had once given some beads and 
toys, and this man returned Smith's gown or 
cloak, which was very welcome as the cold was 
severe. His compass, tablets, and other pieces 
of property were brought back to him, and he 
was well treated though carefully guarded. 

Naturally, he was an object of great interest 
to the chiefs, and they often came to talk with 
him of his country and their own. Smith kept 
his wits about him, and soon discovered that they 
longed to attack the fort at Jamestown, a plan 
strongly favored by the chief of Paspahegh, a 
wily savage who. Smith tells us, showed great 
sign of sorrow over Smith's capture, and while 
at Oropaks was urging the Indians to destroy 
the settlement. Captain Smith was closely ques- 
tioned about the fort, and cheerfully gave such 
full information about the cannon, the hidden 



152 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

mines around its walls, and concerning the early 
return of Captain Newport as, he says drily, 
'' diverted their minds/' 

In fact, the only serious and immediate danger 
that threatened the prisoner came from an old 
man whose son lay dying from wounds inflicted 
by Smith's pistol-shots at the time of his cap- 
ture. This old brave tried to kill the captain, 
but was prevented by the guards. When Smith 
learned the reason for the attack he asked to be 
taken to the young man, hoping to cure him ; and 
at the same time he turned this incident to his own 
advantage with characteristic cleverness. Ad- 
mitting that he was unable to save the patient, he 
said that there was at Jamestown a " water that 
would do it, if they would let him fetch it.'' 

This, of course, they refused; but they offered 
to send for whatever he liked, especially as Smith 
said he would report how kindly they used him 
and that he was well, lest the English should re- 
venge his death. 

The letter was written on a leaf of Smith's 
table-book, or diary, and three Indians journeyed 
through the bitter cold and delivered the docu- 
ment. Meanwhile, Smith had been taken about 
from one Indian town to another, either to save 



TAKEN BEFORE POWHATAN I 53 

him from the vengeance of the relatives whose 
men he had shot — one was dead besides the young 
man he had wounded fatally, and others had 
slighter injuries — or to show the captive about 
among the various towns. They seem to have 
visited five settlements, and then they returned 
to the first town, which is here called Rasawrack, 
though Oropaks was the name given to the 
hunting settlement where the war-dance took 
place. 

The three messengers, having delivered the let- 
ter, were amazed to see all Smith's predictions 
fulfilled. The colonists carried out Smith's writ- 
ten instructions, which had advised them to make 
such a demonstration as would impress the In- 
dians, and at first the messengers ran away; but 
at nightfall they went to a place Smith had ap- 
pointed, and there received the articles he had 
promised would be left for them. These they 
brought back, to the marveling of all, since there 
seemed no escape from one of two surprising con- 
clusions: either that Smith could foretell the 
the future or that the bit of paper he had sent 
" could speak." They would have been little sat- 
isfied with this bit of " conjuring " if they had 
known that Smith had sent to the fort warning 



154 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

of their projected attack, and all the information 
he could gather of the Indians' plans ! 

But they were certainly convinced he was a 
medicine-man, and soon after performed some 
magical ceremony with corn-meal, sticks, songs, 
rattles, and fasting that lasted all day. Seven 
medicine-men, mystically painted, took part, and 
that night " feasted merrily with the best provi- 
sions they could make/' Twice more, on two 
succeeding days, the incantation was repeated, 
the purpose being, as they told him, " to know if 
he intended them well or ill." 

Among other treasures the Indians exhibited 
to Smith a pistol (which by pretended careless- 
ness he broke), and a bag of gunpowder, letting 
him know that they were keeping it till the spring 
in order that they might plant it, " because they 
would be acquainted with the nature of that 
seed." During this part of his captivity the In- 
dians offered to receive Smith into their tribe, 
offering him life, liberty, land, and wives, 
if he would give his counsel in attacking the 
fort. 

The main importance of all these particulars 
is to show the disposition of the Indians. They 
certainly were not friendly, since they had done 



TAKEN BEFORE POWHATAN 155 

their best to kill all the stragglers they could 
catch, and were eager to attack the fort. But 
they were deeply impressed with the magical 
powers of the Englishmen, and seemed to think 
this power resided in their leaders; which ac- 
counts for their desire to gain Smith to their own 
side, and for their fear lest Captain Newport 
should revenge any injury done to Smith or to 
the colony. 

At last, having gained nothing from their cap- 
tive, it was decided to carry him to their great 
chief, Powhatan; and about the 5th of January, 
1608, Smith arrived at Weramocomoco, and was 
brought before the great head of the tribe, the 
chief Wahunsunakok, whom they and we know 
as Powhatan. 

The old chief (he was between sixty and sev- 
enty at the time) received his prisoner in full state 
and dignity, reclining upon a sort of couch, at- 
tended by two of his numerous wives, and wear- 
ing many chains of great pearls about his neck. 
His robe was of raccoon-skins. At each side were 
his chief men ranged upon mats, behind whom 
were women, wearing necklaces of white beads, 
and having their heads painted red. Powhatan 

bore himself " with such a grave and majestical 
10 



15^ CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

countenance as drave me into admiration to see 
such state in a naked savage/' This old despot 
received Smith with much kindness, and Smith 
was welcomed before the chief by a shout of 
triumph. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE RESCUE OF CAPTAIN SMITH BY 
POCAHONTAS 

AS to what followed there are two accounts, 
JLxone taken from Captain Smith's letters sent 
home not long after the occurrence, and another 
published in the " Generall Historic of Vir- 
ginia," to which Smith largely contributed, years 
afterward. The trial and condemnation of the 
captain is told in the second, the first giving only 
a conversation between the chief and the English- 
man and then the statement that he was sent 
home. There is no hint in the first account of the 
attempted execution of Captain Smith, nor of the 
rescue by Pocahontas. And it is for this reason, 
mainly, that the story has been considered by 
some historians an invention. 

But there are reasons, good reasons, for the 
omission of the episode from the first publication. 

This account, which on the title-page is called 
*' A True Relation of such Occurrences and Acci- 

157 



158 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

dents of Note as hath Happened in Virginia 
Since the First Planting of the Colony," came 
out in London in August, 1608, being prepared 
for the press by an editor whose initials are given 
as I. H. ; and this editor admits, as Arber says, 
" somewhat more was by him [Smith] written, 
which being, as I thought, fit to be private, I 
Vv^ould not adventure to make it public." So the 
" True Relation," as any one may see by reading 
this preface, was not a complete publication, and 
besides was meant to present the colony as an at- 
tractive place to emigrants ; and the editor might 
well have doubted the wisdom of showing how 
nearly Captain Smith had come to being put to 
death by the " noble Emperor " Powhatan. But 
whether Smith in his own writing of the " True 
Relation " did or did not mention Pocahontas, 
there is a better test of the truth of the story than 
the mere presence of it in one place and its ab- 
sence in another. That test is whether the story 
needs to be true in order to account for what is 
there. Now, in the " True Relation," as well as 
in every one of the records that have been pub- 
lished, there is told a happening that concerns Po- 
cahontas, Powhatan, and Captain Smith, and 
makes the rescue of Captain Smith by Pocahontas 



THE RESCUE BY POCAHONTAS 1 59 

a necessary forerunner and explanation of the 
later incident. We would not pause here to make 
this argument except to permit the reader to read 
the Pocahontas story with full faith and credit; 
and this later happening seems the strongest con- 
firmation of the story. 

Some time in May, 1608, after Smith had re- 
turned from captivity to the colony, Powhatan 
and the English were in almost open hostility. 
Powhatan was known to be plotting their de- 
struction, and they had captured some of his men, 
and were holding them. Yet the chief, Pow- 
hatan, sent '' his daughter, a child of ten [other 
accounts show she was probably between thirteen 
and fourteen] years old," with one messenger, 
his adviser, Rawhunt, to say " how well Pow- 
hatan loved and trusted me" (Captain Smith), 
" and, in that I should not doubt any way of his 
kindness, he had sent his child, which he most 
esteemed, to see me." Whereupon the prisoners 
were given up to " Pocahontas, the King's daugh- 
ter, in regard to her father's kindness in sending 
her." 

That is, Powhatan puts into the power of the 
English his best loved child, so that she may ob- 
tain the release of the prisoners, and sends her to 



l6o CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

see Captain Smith. Now, this incident is under- 
standable only if we admit the truth of the story 
of her previous rescue of Captain Smith. That 
shows why a child of less than fourteen was 
sent on such an errand, and why she was suc- 
cessful. Upon any other supposition, it would 
seem that Powhatan had lost his sense, and 
the English were as foolish. The sending of 
Pocahontas was an appeal to Captain Smith's 
gratitude, and it was successful. This incident, 
we repeat, is from Smith's " True Relation," the 
same account that omits all mention of the res- 
cue by the Indian girl; and that rescue is all 
that makes her presence in Jamestown at this 
later day at all reasonable. Why else should 
Powhatan send a child in her teens to Captain 
Smith? 

Accepting, therefore, the truth of the second 
account as well as the first, we may resume the 
story of Smith's presentation to Powhatan. 

Smith's entrance being hailed with a shout, the 
" Queen of Appamatuck [Appomattox] was ap- 
pointed to bring him water to wash his hands and 
another brought him a bunch of feathers instead 
of a towel to dry them." Then food was offered 
in great platters. Powhatan questioned the cap- 




Mudhiftr Poiaiiauti/ ^WjflS' tits Cift kit uxanHulintp 
and Ueiv hcjuht.-'dui^q of inn rljtft^s. rejUc ^ fcijbry . 



POCAHONTAS SAVES THE LIFE OF CAPTAIN SMITH 
From an old print in Captain John Smith's " Generall Historic of Virginia" 



THE RESCUE BY POCAHONTAS 1 63 

tive sharply, and Captain Smith repHed without 
the sHghtest regard for the truth. Powhatan 
having asked why the Enghsh had come to the 
country, Smith said they had been fighting the 
Spaniards, forced to retreat, and driven by a 
storm into the bay; that they had then ascended 
the river seeking fresh water; that the pinnace 
being leaky, they had to mend her till Captain 
Newport — "my father," as Smith calls him — 
came to fetch them away. Then Powhatan asked 
why they had gone farther with the small boat, 
and Smith explained that they had wished to find 
out about the salt-water on the other side of the 
mainland; and then said that Powhatan's enemy, 
Monocan, had slain one of Newport's men, whose 
death they intended to avenge. This was a bid 
for Powhatan's favor. 

In return, the old chief began to describe the 
country beyond the falls, and Smith seems to 
have been led to believe that there was salt-water 
within some eight days' journey beyond the falls 
— that is, the present site of Richmond, Virginia. 
Very likely both of these clever enemies were 
exercising their talents for lying to an enemy, try- 
ing to say what would be pleasing without being 
useful. Powhatan said that he would be re- 



164 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

venged upon the Anchanachuck, the name he 
gave to the tribe who had slain Smith's '' bro- 
ther," and told some particulars concerning the 
tribes round about, as well as speaking of cer- 
tain white men in the land at various points, no 
doubt referring to some of the Spanish colonies. 
In return Captain Smith indulged in some boast- 
ing of the power of the King of England, and 
endeavored to impress Powhatan with a sense of 
the mightiness of Captain Newport, " King of all 
the Waters,'' whose early return he prophesied. 

Just when all this talk took place is uncertain; 
probably most of it after the rescue of Captain 
Smith from death. The full account of it occurs 
in the " True Relation," from which all the trial 
and condemnation is absent. In the " Generall 
Historic " we are told only that " a long consul- 
tation was held, the conclusion of which was " 
that '' two great stones were brought before Pow- 
hatan, as many as could laid hands on him, 
dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head; 
and being ready with their clubs to beat out his 
brains, Pocahontas, the King's dearest daughter, 
when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in 
her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him 
from death : whereat the Emperor was content he 



THE RESCUE BY POCAHONTAS 1 65 

should live to make him hatchets and her bells, 
beads, and copper; for they thought him as well 
of all occupations as themselves." 

This is the incident precisely as it is told by 
Captain Smith. Who can find in it any of the 
''romancing'' of which he has been accused? 
Could anything be drier? A romancer, a brag- 
gart, would surely have made better use of his 
imagination. He would have recorded the facts 
more fully. He would have attempted to make 
himself seem more important, and have made it 
out that he was saved because they feared him or 
considered him a great chief or medicine-man. 
But Smith says he was saved to make hatchets 
for the chief, beads and bells for a little girl ! 

Undoubtedly Smith did not understand the rea- 
son why Pocahontas was able to save him after 
he had been condemned as the result of a long 
deliberation of the chiefs ; but later knowledge of 
Indian customs makes the story quite reasonable 
to us. It is now well known that a captive, es- 
pecially if he be brave and of renown, could 
be adopted into the tribe at the request of some 
member of it — especially by one who has lost a 
relative. 

The chief of a tribe, as the father of his peo- 



l66 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

pie, certainly might exercise that right, and at 
the request of Pocahontas it is probable that this 
is what Powhatan did. 

Perhaps it was to confirm the adoption of 
Smith into the tribe that Powhatan went through 
certain ceremonies a few days afterward. Smith 
was taken into the woods, and left alone in a hut 
where there was a curtain dividing the interior 
into two parts. From behind this curtain came 
'' the most dolefullest noise he ever heard," and 
then appeared in queer disguise the aged Pow- 
hatan and some two hundred more, and '' told him 
they were friends." Powhatan next informed his 
captive that he would be sent back to Jamestown, 
and that Smith must send to Powhatan two great 
guns and a grindstone, for which would be given 
the " Country of Capahowosick ; and that he 
would for ever esteem Smith as his son Nanta- 
quoud." This giving of a new name is a strong 
confirmation of the theory of adoption; and it is 
difficult, upon any other theory, to explain the 
captain's release from captivity and his good 
treatment. In the first account of these matters, 
the " True Relation," Powhatan is said to have 
asked Smith to stay with him, and to live at Cap- 
ahowasicke (as it is there spelled), and then 



X 



THE RESCUE BY POCAHONTAS 1 67 

Smith was dismissed with guides, four in one 
account, twelve in the other, and returns, after 
camping for one night in the woods, arriving 
early the next morning at the fort in Jamestown. 

This was, according to the authorities, on the 
8th of January, 1608; and if that date is right. 
Smith had been absent since the i6th of Decem- 
ber, 1607, i^ ^11 ^o^ twenty-three days, though in 
his first account of the adventure he gives no exact 
idea of the length of his absence; in the second 
account, the '' Proceedings of the First Plant- 
ers," the period is called '' a month," and in the 
third account, six or seven weeks. Exactly what 
was the length of time we cannot tell, but the 
probability seems to be that no one cared exactly 
how long it was. 

Upon arriving at the fort. Smith entertained 
his guides, and then proceeded with grim humor 
to carry out his bargain with Powhatan. " He 
showed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, 
two demi-culverins and a millstone to carry Pow- 
hatan. They found them somewhat heavy." 
Thereupon Smith discharged the cannon (weigh- 
ing 4500 pounds each) at the icy branches of the 
trees, and brought about such a clattering and 
fall of icicles that the natives scampered away 



1 68 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

half dead with fear. But they were encouraged 
to return, and rewarded with such " toys " and 
'* presents as gave them in general full content." 

Of course, the colonists at the fort were found 
to be in trouble; and for the third time Captain 
Smith prevented the pinnace from sailing away 
with deserters. The boat would, indeed, have 
been gone if the cold had not been so severe, and 
the disappointment of the conspirators now turned 
upon Smith. They devised an ingenious plan to 
ruin him. He was accused by Ratcliffe, the presi- 
dent, Gabriel Archer, the '' scrivener " or secre- 
tary, and others, of having forfeited his life 
under a scriptural law found in the " Levitical 
Law." Possibly the law referred to is that given 
in Chapter 24, verse 17, of the Book of Leviticus, 
" He that killeth any man shall surely be put to 
death,"— for this certainly would serve the pur- 
pose as well as any other. But the rest of the 
verse following might be cited to show that it is 
meant to apply to any who causes the death of a 
man; and the ingenuity of Smith's accusers ap- 
plied this or some similar text to the death of 
Robinson and Emery — the two men shot by the 
Indians near the bank of the Chickahominy. 

Certainly there were no witnesses to the death 



THE RESCUE BY POCAHONTAS 1 69 

of these men, and Captain Smith had come back 
safe and sound, apparently on good terms with 
Powhatan and his followers. Smith was indicted 
on this absurd ground, was tried on the very day 
of his return, and was actually condemned on this 
trumped-up charge, with sentence to be hanged 
the very next day! But this was absurd. He 
says that the conspirators were " laid by the 
heels," or put into custody, and then the arrival 
of Captain Newport from England put an end to 
these high-handed proceedings and to others as 
foolish — among which was a proposition to call 
a " Parliament " for the purpose of deciding whe- 
ther to return to England, abandoning the colony: 
a project certainly contrary to everything in 
the nature of law and order in their organization, 
and one that would have meant the abandoning 
of many of the colonists to death by famine or 
the Indian attacks. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE COMING OF NEWPORT FROM ENGLAND — POW- 
HATAN AS A TRADER 

THE expedition for the relief of Jamestown 
—known by the colonists as " the first 
supply ''—consisted of two ships, for besides that 
commanded by Newport there was another, the 
Phoenix, under Captain Francis Nelson. This 
ship came so far as to be within sight of Cape 
Henry, but was then by contrary winds forced to 
put to sea and so driven and buffeted that the 
captain had to land at the West Indies to repair 
his masts and refill his water-butts. Newport, as 
has been said, arrived in good season, on the very 
day of Smith's return. There were about a hun- 
dred new colonists came with the expedition, but 
there was now no difficulty about food, since the 
Indians, as all the accounts say, brought " bread, 
fish, turkeys, squirrels, deer, and other wild 
beasts." 

If the Pocahontas story is a mere fiction, 

170 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT IJl 

how is this generosity and change of heart on the 
part of the Indians explained? The only other 
explanation is that a deep impression was made on 
Powhatan by Smith's account of the power of the 
English, and of their '' Lord of the Waters/' Cap- 
tain Newport and Smith's critics will not allow 
him to have known enough of the Algonkin 
tongue to explain these things, since they deny 
his ability to have told his captors a few much 
simpler matters only a few days before. 

Surely there is no doubt that all the colonists 
saw the arrival of provisions, and knew a great 
change had taken place in the nature of their 
relations with the Indians— the very natives who 
had tortured one and shot to death two more of 
their comrades within a month. The bearers of 
these goods came always to Captain Smith, and 
always part of their supplies was a present to 
him, while the rest was for sale at a price that he 
fixed ; and this fixing of the price for the Indians 
is another indication that he was regarded as an 
adopted member of the tribe. 

Captain Newport had certainly gained confi- 
dence in Captain Smith ; and Archer had been re- 
moved from the council, being replaced by a new 
arrival named Scrivener—'' a very wise, under- 



172 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

standing gentleman." But there was jealousy of 
Smith's influence, and this feeling led many to 
be lavish toward the Indians; which naturally 
raised the price of all commodities, so that in a 
short time " it followed that could not be had for 
a pound of copper which before was sold us for an 
ounce." But this made the Indians think the 
more of Newport, who had sent presents to Pow- 
hatan while the pinnace was being made ready 
for a visit of ceremony to that chief. 

Meanwhile the new arrivals had accidentally 
set fire to their lodgings, and the reed thatch of 
other huts catching the flames, they spread until 
many dwellings and even the palisades were 
burnt. This was about the middle of January, 
about a week after their coming. The destruc- 
tion was very great — the loss including their 
arms, bedding, clothes, and " much private pro- 
vision." One of the greatest losers by the fire 
was the clergyman, '' good Master Hunt," whose 
private library and all his property but the clothes 
on his back went up in smoke. " Yet none ever 
heard him repine at his loss." 

The sailors in the ships had been kindly wel- 
comed by the old colonists, and allowed to trade 
at their pleasure with the Indians who came about 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT I 73 

the settlement; and these were the men who so 
disordered the market and raised prices. But 
this was not the worst. There was an idea in 
England that, since there were certainly in Amer- 
ica good mines from which the Spaniards secured 
fortunes, the Virginian settlers ought to find 
some of them. And the sailors and new arrivals 
betook themselves strenuously to gold-digging, 
much to the disgust of Captain Smith and others 
of the more sensible colonists. Captain Smith is 
declared by the writer of the history to have said 
to Captain Martin that '' he was not enamoured 
of their dirty skill," for '' never anything did 
more torment him than to see all necessary busi- 
ness neglected to freight such a drunken ship 
with so much gilded dirt." 

But Powhatan being eager to see the great 
Captain Newport, at last the expedition was 
ready, and, with forty men, Newport, Smith, 
and Scrivener rowed up the river and arrived 
at Werowocomoco — a name spelled differently 
nearly every time it occurs. But Captain New- 
port did not relish the idea of putting himself into 
Powhatan's power with so small a force, where- 
upon Smith off'ered to take the risk with half the 

number, and so set forward on shore, leaving 
11 



174 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Newport in the boat. Smith, after some blunder- 
ing, got on the right route to Powhatan's town, 
met a party of Indians sent to receive him, and 
came to a wide creek over which had been made 
a ramshackle bridge. Fearing a trap. Smith 
caused his Indian guides to be mingled with his 
own men, and so began the crossing; but the In- 
dians brought a canoe and ferried some of the 
party over. On they went, and were marched 
two by two up to Powhatan's lodge, where he re- 
ceived them in the same royal state as Smith had 
before seen him keeping — throne, courtiers, wo- 
men, and all. His welcome was kindly, though 
full of dignity, and he was much pleased with 
Smith's presents — a suit of red cloth, a white 
greyhound, and a hat that is not described, prom- 
ising in return a perpetual league and friend- 
ship. After the same young Queen of Appomat- 
tox had again brought water for Smith to wash, 
and the Englishman had been fed with turkey 
and bread, a conversation was held. 

Powhatan asked for Newport, and was told 
he would come next day; and then the wily chief 
inquired about the cannon Smith had promised. 
Smith, seeing by Powhatan's " merry counte- 
nance," that the joke would be acceptable, replied 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT I 75 

that he had offered four denii-culverins, but 
Powhatan's men refused to take them. There- 
upon Powhatan burst out laughing, and ordered 
Smith's men brought in, whom he received gra- 
ciously, but suggested they should lay down their 
arms before him. Smith replied that their ene- 
mies desired this, but never their friends; and 
promised that, to assure him of their friendship. 
Captain Newport would give him " a son " of 
his next day, and, when Powhatan pleased, would 
assist in subduing the chief's enemies. 

All this was kindly received by the old chief, 
who made a speech in return, and proclaimed 
Captain Smith a werowance, or chieftain of 
Powhatan, bidding his people so to regard him, 
and to consider his followers as Powhatans. 
Thereupon Captain Smith expressed his thanks 
and was conducted from the royal presence, his 
men being rewarded with more corn, which 
Smith explains to be the natives' " only wealth." 

But, in spite of Captain Smith's advice, the 
boat had been carelessly allowed to drift down the 
river with the tide, and could not be found. Pow- 
hatan, learning that his guests had been thus 
stranded, invited them to stay overnight, and 
provided them with a roomy house hung round 



1/6 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

with bows and arrows. Fires were built, venison 
sent in for the men, and at supper-time he sent a 
special invitation for Smith to eat with him, 
bringing only two other guests. Warning his 
men to be on their guard, Smith went, and after 
several hours' talk was conducted back to his men 
by torchlight. 

Next morning, Powhatan exhibited his navy 
of canoes, explaining which ones brought tribute 
and from what tribes ; but, upon seeing Newport 
and Scrivener landing, Powhatan retired to re- 
ceive them. 

This treatment of Captain Smith, and espe- 
cially the appointing of him a chieftain, are other 
evidences of the adoption into the tribe; and 
it is to be noticed that the ceremony took place 
in the presence of all Smith's party, — some twenty 
men, — which forbids us to believe it an invention. 
Indeed, it may be said that for Captain Smith to 
have invented all these stories told in such minute 
detail would be a greater achievement than any 
which he is accused of feigning. The names of 
his followers are given, and among these there 
were probably many (four of the first settlers, 
certainly) who knew enough of Powhatan's lan- 
guage to follow at least the main drift of his 
speech. 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT I 77 

The next day, as agreed, Captain Newport 
came ashore from the boat, and presented to Pow- 
hatan an EngHsh boy, Thomas Salvage, in return 
for whom Powhatan gave the Indian, Namontack, 
" his trusty servant, and one of a shrewd, subtile 
capacity." 

Three or four days were spent in feasting, 
dancing, and trading; and when trade was begun, 
Powhatan thus addressed Newport: 

'' Captain Newport, it is not agreeable to my 
greatness in this peddling manner to trade for 
trifles, and I esteem you also a great werowance 
[chief]. Therefore, lay me down all your com- 
modities together ; what I like, I will take, and in 
recompense give you what I think fitting their 
value." 

Smith, being interpreter (apparently Newport 
thought Smith could speak the language), urged 
Newport to avoid this trap, telling him Powhatan 
would only cheat them. But Newport thought 
he knew better, offered his goods to the chief, and 
received in return about four bushels of corn 
where he had expected twenty hogsheads. 

'' This bred some unkindness between our two 
captains" (Smith and Newport), says the nar- 
rator. And it seems possible that Captain Smith 



178 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

may have suggested, by word or act, that Newport 
had made a fool of himself. At all events, Smith 
proceeded to prove this by a very simple object- 
lesson. He carelessly displayed certain trifles in 
such a way as to interest the chief — among the 
rest some blue beads. These struck Powhatan as 
desirable. Smith showed no wish to part with 
the priceless jewels, and gave it out that they were 
only for the wear of the greatest kings. Pow- 
hatan grew warm as Smith grew cold; and at 
last, as a great favor, being allowed to buy the 
blue beads for two or three hundred bushels of 
corn, he was properly grateful. The same time- 
worn trick succeeded with Opechancanough, and 
blue beads became '' the rage " among the In- 
dians, and were by law restricted to those of royal 
blood. 

During their stay, Powhatan made a number 
of attempts to induce the English to part with 
their weapons, saying that it was not like friends 
to come armed, and at another time asserting 
that the guns frightened the women and children. 
But the diplomatic Captain Smith, in spite of 
Newport's thinking him over-cautious, managed 
to retain the weapons. There was also an evident 
desire to see them leave their boat unguarded, but 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT 1 79 

this, too, was balked, either Smith or Scrivener 
managing to keep always by it. 

In every way Powhatan tried to outwit the 
English, but found he had met his match when- 
ever Smith was able to keep Newport from bun- 
gling. Thus, when Powhatan asked to see all the 
hatchets and copper they had brought. Smith 
objected that he would rather know what would 
be given for one at a time. Then Newport must 
display his generosity, and offered '' twelve great 
coppers to try his kindness," receiving in return 
as much corn as Smith says he had bought for 
one smaller copper. 

At another time. Smith and Scrivener were 
caught in the mud in the canoes they had taken 
to go to their boat, and the Indians plunged into 
the marsh, took them out, and cared for them 
most attentively. Smith saying of their conduct, 
" This kindness I found when I little expected less 
than a mischief." 

But the most important conference held with 
Powhatan related to a projected attack upon the 
Monacans, in which Powhatan was to join a hun- 
dred of his men to as many of theirs, and then, 
having sailed up to the falls, he said the English 
could make boats to go onward. This plan was 



l8o CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

welcome to Newport, who, once afloat above the 
falls, thought it would be easy to discover the 
sea route to India. But Captain Smith had no 
confidence in Powhatan's good faith. 

Later came a messenger from Opechanca- 
nough inviting them to visit him, but Powhatan 
would not then let them go. Upon more press- 
ing invitation, however, it was decided they 
should go. Their experiences here were of much 
the same order, and they departed after a final 
visit to Powhatan, taking with them the Indian re- 
ceived in exchange for the English boy, left — 
poor fellow! — among the savages. This Indian 
was, Smith thinks, instructed by Powhatan to go 
to England in order that he might report its 
strength and condition, which seems likely 
enough. 

Early in March they returned to the settlement, 
and after a stay of about a month longer en- 
gaged in " gold "-mining, the mariners took 
themselves and their ship away — much to the re- 
lief of the more thoughtful colonists. The ship 
had remained from January 8 to April lo, 1608, 
and this had cost the settlement dear. There was 
just complaint that provisions were eaten by the 
sailors, that there was loss to the cargo by leak- 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT l8l 

age and ship-rats, and that the ship had been a 
" moving tavern " where those who had money, 
spare clothes, credit, gold rings, or such commod- 
ities spent their substance and wasted their time 
in consuming '' their own provision and paying 
for it at fifteen times its value." 

With the ship went Wingfield, the deposed 
president, and Gabriel Archer— a good riddance, 
the writers of the history declare, " since they 
[the colonists] had no use for Parliaments, 
Plays, Petitions, Admirals, Recorders, Interpre- 
ters, Chronologers [chroniclers?], Courts of 
Plea, nor Justices of the Peace/' Evidently they 
had discovered little use for red-tape in the New 
World! 

Glad to get back to practical matters, the col- 
ony now set to work to remedy the damage done 
by the fire. Scrivener and Smith being in actual 
command, since President Ratcliffe and Captain 
Martin v/ere both incapacitated by ill health. 
They rebuilt the church and the houses, set up 
new palisades, cleared land, planted corn, and put 
a new roof upon the storehouse, which, being of 
stone or brick, had withstood the fire. 

They were cheered in these labors by the ar- 
rival of the Phoenix, and this proved really a 



l82 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

blessing, since Captain Nelson treated them hon- 
estly, and landed the stores he had brought. 

In order that there might be some news of a 
discovery to send home, the president now or- 
dered that Captain Smith should make another 
expedition, this time into the land of the Mona- 
cans, the people believed from Powhatan's story 
to live beyond the falls of the James River. 
There was some opposition to this plan. Captain 
Martin believing it best to freight the Phoenix 
with gold ore, and Smith suggesting a cargo of 
cedar as a substitute for either " the hopes of an 
uncertain discovery " or the bits of rock that 
might glitter but were certainly not gold. But 
the expedition was insisted upon, and Smith made 
ready for it by drilling sixty men for two months 
until they had full confidence in their ability to 
defend themselves. 

Meanwhile there was trouble with the Indians. 
Powhatan had sent Newport as a parting gift 
twenty turkeys, asking for twenty swords in re- 
turn. Newport had been fool enough to comply; 
but when, after his departure, more birds came to 
Smith, with the same request for swords, it was 
ignored. Thereupon Powhatan's men became 
troublesome, laying ambuscades at their very 



THE COMING OF NEWPORT 1 8 



O 



gates, and seizing what tools or weapons they 
could; while the colonists, in obedience to strict 
orders from England, could not punish the 
thieves. 

But they " meddled with Captain Smith," and 
found, as the Turk had done, that they had caught 
a Tatar; for the young man of twenty-nine pro- 
ceeded to chase the Indians about, beat them, im- 
prison them, and in general teach them manners. 
This led to the capture of two of the English in 
revenge, and then the savages marched a war- 
party up to the fort, demanding the seven Indians 
Smith held in custody. 

This, as our Artemus Ward says, " was 2 
mutch''; and Captain Smith "sallied out 
amongst '' them and soon brought them to terms. 
They gave up the Englishmen, and begged for 
peace. Then, by causing a volley to be fired 
within the fort. Smith made each of his captives 
believe he had slain some of the prisoners, and 
thereupon, cross-questioning all, learned that 
Powhatan had been eager to get the swords be- 
cause he meant to attack the fort. 

Here again is proof that Smith, either because 
of his favor with Powhatan or because they 
thought him possessed of supernatural power, 



184 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

had much influence over them, and was entirely 
fearless among them. 

It was just after this that Pocahontas came, 
as already noted, with Rawhunt alone, and asked 
for the release of the captive Indians, which was 
at once granted " in regard of her father's kind- 
ness in sending her." 

Is it unfair to conclude that Powhatan would 
hardly at this time have intrusted a pet child to 
Captain Smith unless there was reason for being 
sure she would be received with special consid- 
eration? 



CHAPTER XVI 

FURTHER EXPLANATIONS OF THE COAST AND 
HARBORS — SMITH TAKES THE PRESIDENCY 

FROM his prisoners, however, by threats 
and by cross-questioning, Smith had dis- 
covered plenty to show that there was treachery 
intended toward all the English, as soon as New- 
port should again come from England with the 
Indian hostage. And he sent word to Powhatan 
that they intended no hostility but would destroy 
him if any arrow was shot against the English. 
But these plots and counterplots amounted to 
nothing. Smith believed that one attempt to en- 
trap him was made by sending an Indian to show 
a pretended mine, but this false guide carried out 
the plan so unskilfully as to win twenty lashes 
with a rope, instead of the promised copper that 
was to be his if he showed the mine; and this was 
the last of such attempts until the sailing of the 
Phoenix, laden with cedar as Captain Smith had 

advised. Another bit of cargo which the colo- 

185 



1 86 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

nists willingly included was Captain Martin, the 
councilor, who was still disabled by ague. Thus 
one by one the incompetent leaders were weeded 
out, which was fortunate indeed, considering that 
the Phoenix had brought one hundred and twenty 
more settlers, raw material to be licked into 
shape. There was still too large a proportion of 
" gentlemen," but there were twenty-one labor- 
ers, six tailors, and a fair sprinkling of trades- 
men — including a jeweler and a goldsmith. 

The Phoenix sailed on June 2, 1608, and ar- 
rived in England after a quick voyage, bearing 
with her Smith's " True Relation," his letter con- 
taining the story of the colony; and also another 
letter from him to Henry Hudson, with sugges- 
tions for finding the South Sea route to India, a 
letter that is believed to have greatly influenced 
the discoverer of the Hudson River. Smith and 
his company of explorers, fifteen in number, bade 
the ship farewell at Cape Henry, and then 
crossed the bay to the islands that had been 
named for him " Smith's Isles," for their explo- 
ration this time was to be of the less known east- 
ern shore and of the Chesapeake Bay. 

They first met two Indians with spears, bone- 
headed, and were bv them directed to their chief 



COAST AND HARBORS 187 

at Accomack. This werowance proved " a 
proper, civil," and comely savage, who described 
the country round as well as he could ; and hence 
they sailed away along the coast, examining 
'^ every inlet and bay fit for harbor or habita- 
tions." While trying to reach some islands, they 
were overtaken by a sudden thunder-storm and 
squall, and had a narrow escape from wreck. 

There is no need to follow all their explorations 
of a land now so well known, and we shall there- 
fore only record such happenings as seem of in- 
terest. The early days were tempestuous, their 
sail was blown to pieces, and they had to repair 
it with their shirts. The natives at Cuskarawack, 
were amazed to see them, climbed trees for a 
better view, and followed them along the shores; 
but they were bitterly hostile at first, sending 
flights of arrows even while the boat was out of 
range. Within a day they became friendly, in 
appearance, to lure the strangers ashore; but the 
English saw some lying in ambuscade, and sent 
a volley into the crowd, whereat the Indians " all 
lay trembling on the ground, creeping some one 
way and some another into a great cluster of 
reeds hard by." Toward evening, the English 
came nearer, and fired another volley. Then they 



1 88 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

landed, and saw no natives, but found blood on 
the ground. The sight of smoke rising led them 
to a village of four or five houses, where they left 
copper, beads, and so on, returning again to their 
boat for the night. 

Next morning four canoemen cattle in from a 
fishing excursion, invited them ashore, and suc- 
ceeded in recalling the village folk, who then be- 
came very friendly and traded with the strangers. 

Next the English crossed toward the western 
shore of Chesapeake Bay, and sailed along, ex- 
ploring it for thirty leagues. It is described as 
well watered, mountainous, barren, but with .fer- 
tile valleys, and " much frequented by wolves, 
bears, deer and other wild beasts." They found 
here but one navigable river. 

Some of the " gallants '' had at the outset 
seemed to think their captain (Smith) would re- 
turn too soon; but after some two weeks, with 
daily spells at rowing and only spoiled bread to 
eat, they took another tack, and begged him so to 
return that he made them a speech rebuking 
them, and offering to bear the worst of whatever 
was to come. This carried them on for two or 
three days, and then several fell sick, whereupon 
they turned back, and on the i6th of June dis- 



COAST AND HARBORS 1 89 

covered the Potomac River, up which they sailed 
thirty miles, seeing no Indians. Then they met 
two natives, and were guided up a little creek, 
where they found themselves amid several thou- 
sand yelling painted warriors. A single volley 
caused these furies to subside, and then hostages 
were exchanged, and it was learned that Pow- 
hatan had caused this ambuscade, with the con- 
nivance of the malcontents of the colony — which 
seems an unlikely story. 

Similar occurrences were met with at other 
places; and there was a mine found where the 
savages extracted yellow spangles from a clayey 
sand. Of this substance the explorers took speci- 
mens, but apparently with little faith in its value. 
They secured some furs, however, and found fish 
very abundant. For want of a net they tried to 
catch them in a frying-pan, but " found it a bad 
instrument to catch fish with." 

They met many natives, but succeeded in keep- 
ing on good terms with all, since Smith always 
demanded their weapons, " together with some 
child or two for hostage,'' and thus prevented 
treachery; and the narrator says it would be te- 
dious to go into particulars, so he concludes his 

story of the trip by telling how they were fishing 
12 



igO CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

in shoal water, spearing fish with their swords, 
when Captain Smith, taking one from his sword, 
was stung by it. This was a sting-ray, and the 
captain, being struck in the wrist, was so poisoned 
that in four hours he gave up hope of recovery, 
and directed his grave to be dug. But he was so 
cared for by Dr. Russell (one of the new-comers) 
that he recovered sufficiently to eat a part of the 
fish for supper. The island near which this hap- 
pened was named " Stingray Isle." 

Next day they arrived at Kecoughtan, and on 
July 21 came safely home. The usual cheerful 
condition of things was there to greet Smith on 
his return, caused, as he says, by the " unreason- 
able, needless cruelty of the silly President,'' who 
had taken no care to preserve the store of pro- 
visions, and had set the men to building some sort 
of mansion or hunting-lodge in the woods for his 
personal use. 

This had caused much hard feeling and almost 
bred a mutiny, for Scrivener had been ill, and 
there was no one to keep Ratcliffe in check. Be- 
sides, the new-comers had been suffering from 
fevers, and those not sick were lame and bruised. 
Smith's arrival had prevented an uprising against 
the authorities, and now he was besought to de- 



COAST AND HARBORS IQI 

pose Ratcliffe and assume the presidency himself. 
This he would not do, but brought about the elec- 
tion of Scrivener, saw that the stores were 
equally distributed, and that honest officers were 
appointed to keep matters in order. All unneces- 
sary work was stopped because of the summer 
heat and until the men should be in better health ; 
and, leaving the colonists to recover, Captain 
Smith set out once more to explore. 

For two or three days the party, twelve men 
this time, remained at Kecoughtan waiting a fa- 
vorable wind, and enjoying the hospitality of the 
friendly Indians, who believed Smith about to at- 
tack the Massowomeks, a nation to the north- 
ward, of whom he had learned in his first 
expedition. These Indians may have been the 
Iroquois, as they were reported to be brave and 
warlike, numerous, and formidable enough to be 
feared even by the confederacy of Powhatan. 

After leaving Kecoughtan, they passed the 
first night at Stingray Isle, and next day explored 
the river Bolus (the Patapsco) and its tributaries 
(Susquehanna and Sassafras rivers). Here, 
near the mouth of the river, they first came upon 
the renowned Massowomeks, in seven or eight 
canoes. Smith set sail for the hostile fleet, though 



192 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

more than half his men, the new-comers, were 
sick, and lying in the bottom of the boat. Put- 
ting their hats on sticks along the gunwale, a 
goodly show of force was made, and the Masso- 
womeks ran ashore. The English, following, 
soon brought them to parley and trade, but were 
unable to understand their language, and at night 
left them, having learned only that this was a 
war-party returning from a fight with the Tock- 
woghes. 

The English soon after met this other tribe, 
and upon showing some of the weapons secured 
by trade from the Massowomeks were believed to 
have fought against them, and therefore to be 
friends to the Tockwoghes. This gained them 
the friendship of these Indians, and through 
them the English met also the Susquehannocks, 
a giant-like people, also enemies of the Masso- 
womeks. 

It was the custom of the English to read pray- 
ers and a psalm daily; and the Susquehannocks, 
imitating, performed a religious ceremony to the 
sun, and then, with nearly equal reverence, adored 
Captain Smith, and seemed to crown him as 
" their Governor and Emperor,'' that he might 
aid them against the Massowomeks. Smith 



COAST AND HARBORS 1 93 

learned much more of these Massowomeks, in- 
cluding the fact that they lived on a great lake, 
or river, northward, and traded with the French. 

Going onward, they continued their exploring, 
discovering and naming " Peregrine Mount " 
and '' Willoughby River " (in memory of Smith's 
boyhood friends), and setting up crosses and 
memorials. The only adventures worthy of note 
were a fight with the Rappahannocks, in which 
they made a bulwark round their forecastle wdth 
the shields of the Massowomeks, — wicker and 
grass, but impervious to arrows, — and the cap- 
ture of a wounded Indian, from whom they 
learned that the English were regarded by his 
tribe as " a people come from under the world to 
take their world from them." Questioned about 
the country beyond the mountains, the Indian 
said he knew nothing of it, because, the woods not 
being burned, they could not travel there. 

The English w^ould not stay to meet these 
tribes, but were pursued by them some twelve 
miles, when through their captive they made 
peace, and there was some trading. On their way 
homeward they made a treaty, also, with the Rap- 
pahannocks, and confirmed it by bringing about 
three marriages of women belonging to their 



194 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

king, carried out further explorations nearer 
their own settlement, were caught in a thunder- 
squall, and fought a naval battle. This resulted 
in a victory and treaty of peace, including a trib- 
ute of corn, — for the firearms were of far longer 
range than the bows, — and thereupon the expedi- 
tion once more returned to Jamestown, September 
7, 1608. 

They found affairs in rather better condition 
than usual, since Ratcliffe had been imprisoned 
for mutiny, and Scrivener had looked well after 
the harvest. But many were dead, some were 
sick, and a part of their stores had been spoiled 
by rain. 

Three days later, " by request of the company 
and election of the council,'' Captain Smith at last 
took the presidency, and by a vigorous admini- 
stration tried to put all to rights. The church was 
repaired, the leaky storehouse newly roofed, build- 
ings put up to receive further supplies, the fort 
completed, and discipline of the garrison enforced. 
Percy, being sent to receive the corn promised 
by the Indians, met Captain Newport's vessel, 
and was ordered to return. Newport was the 
bearer of instructions from the London authori- 
ties, instructions so ignorant and absurd that it is 



TAKES THE PRESIDENCY I 95 

irritating to read them now, nearly three hundred 
years later. Their general purport was an order 
to discover the '' South Sea " on the other side of 
the continent; to bring back gold (for what the 
mariners had brought home had proved to be 
mica) ; and, if possible, to find one of the survivors 
of the Raleigh colony on Roanoke Island! Be- 
sides all this nonsense, Powhatan was to be 
crowned King or " Emperor of Virginia/' a 
thing if possible more ridiculous than any of the 
others, and to be made happy by a present of a 
basin and pitcher, bed and bedclothes, and such 
rubbish. In addition to these clever ideas, the 
council (probably by Newport's suggestion) had 
sent, instead of food, seventy Dutchmen and Poles 
to make "pitch, tar, glass, mills, and soap-ashes.'' 
Captain Smith tried in vain to oppose these lu- 
nacies, but Newport restored Ratcliffe to office 
and added two new men to the council (good men, 
but raw and inexperienced), and the vote was to 
carry out the program. All work was aban- 
doned, and one hundred and twenty men were 
appointed to execute Newport's hare-brained 
schemes. Being accused of opposing the project 
of discovery, and Newport's having hinted this 
was because Smith intended to find the South Sea 



196 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

himself, Captain Smith consented to lend all the 
aid he could to these matters. Newport also 
seems to have accused the vigorous captain of 
having made the Indians hostile by cruelty; 
whereupon Captain Smith offered to visit Pow- 
hatan with only four companions—'' where Cap- 
tain Newport durst not go with less than one hun- 
dred and twenty ^' — and to ask Powhatan to save 
time by coming for his coronation to Jamestown. 

This offer Smith carried out, and, finding the old 
chief absent, awaited his return, being meanwhile 
entertained by a masquerade of Indian maidens, 
contrived by Pocahontas and her women, and by 
a banquet, ending in a torch-bearers' procession. 
Whether this was a ceremonial, as most Indian 
dances are, or a mere merrymaking, we have no 
means of knowing. Upon Powhatan's return. 
Smith told his errand, delivered to him the Indian 
Namontack, who had returned from England, and 
desired the chief to come to Jamestown to receive 
the presents and " to conclude his revenge against 
the Monacans." 

But Powhatan was too wise to be fooled, as his 
answer shows. He said : " If your King has sent 
me presents, I also am a King and this is my land. 
Eight days will I stay to receive them. Your fa- 



TAKES THE PRESIDENCY * I97 

ther [Newport] is to come to me, not I to him; nor 
yet to your fort. Neither will I bite at such a bait. 
As for the Monacans, I can revenge my own in- 
juries. . . . For any salt-water beyond the moun- 
tains, the relations you have from my people are 
false." Whereupon he began to draw maps on the 
ground. In all courtesy to Captain Smith, but 
with absolute refusal, the mission ended. 

If Smith invented this speech — so exactly in 
keeping with the character of the American In- 
dian as we now know it — he was a genius as an 
imaginative writer. 

There was no other way than to take the coro- 
nation to Powhatan, since he would not come to 
the coronation. And then the absurd invention 
of King James was carried out as well as could 
be. Powhatan, however, would not kneel to be 
crowned, having no idea of what all the foolery 
meant, and had to be forced to bend by the com- 
bined weight of several men. The salvo of guns 
that followed scared the noble savage nearly out 
of his wits; but he soon recovered, and gave his 
old mantle and shoes to Newport in recognition 
of his kindness. Then, having refused to lend aid 
against the Monacans, Newport's pageant de- 
parted with a paltry present of corn. So ended 



198 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

the grand coronation of the Emperor of Virginia, 
— perhaps no more ridiculous than any other in 
all essentials,— and the English returned to 
Jamestown to prepare for the discovery of the 
South Sea. 

With Newport, it must be recorded, came, be- 
sides some seventy or more men, the first women 
settlers. Mistress Forrest, and her maid, Anne 
Burras, — who by the first English marriage in 
the colony soon became the wife of John Laydon. 

The expedition conducted by Newport was a 
ridiculous proceeding, not worth the space to 
chronicle more than its absolute failure to secure 
gold, geographical knowledge, or food from the 
Indians. One of the party says of it, " We arrived 
at Jamestown half sick, all complaining, and tired 
with toil, famine, and discontent." 

Meanwhile Smith devoted himself to the prac- 
tical business of gathering a commercial cargo for 
the vessel, such as tar, pitch, and clapboards. 
Among the makers of the last were certain gen- 
tlemen, including Smith himself, who punctuated 
their ax-strokes with oaths; and, by Smith's con- 
triving, this profanity was recorded and punished 
by pouring into a man's sleeve at evening as many 
cans of water as he had marks against him dur- 



TAKES THE PRESIDENCY 1 99 

ing the day. This soon made oaths a scarce arti- 
cle, and seems a method of reform worthy of imi- 
tation by modern morahsts. As to the efficiency 
of these gentlemen wood-choppers, " thirty or 
forty of them did better than a hundred of those 
who were compelled to the labor,'' says their an- 
nalist, but '' twenty good workmen had been 
better than them all." 

But a more important matter even than freight- 
ing the vessel was securing an ample food-supply 
for the winter; and for this purpose Smith made 
another boat-expedition to the Chickahominy re- 
gion, where, finding Powhatan had forbidden 
food to be given, hoping to starve out the colony, 
Smith pretended to have come on a warlike mis- 
sion—to avenge the death of Emery and Rob- 
inson. Upon his display of force, the Indians re- 
considered their refusal to send food, and excused 
their former attitude by^a claim that they had 
little for themselves. They gave more than a 
hundred bushels, and soon after Scrivener ob- 
tained a further supply. But there was a com- 
plete lack of discipline in the settlement, and 
stealing was rife; the colonists helped themselves 
to the articles sent for trading, and procured 
from the Indians furs, baskets, and other things 



200 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

to exchange with the sailors for provisions or 
Hquors. 

Captain Newport himself had to be disciplined, 
either because he would not check these abuses, or 
because he joined in the attempts of some of the 
council to punish Captain Smith for leaving the 
fort. Smith threatened to hold the ship for a year 
to give Newport an experience of affairs in the 
colony, and by this threat brought him to his 
senses. Not long afterward, and probably '' by 
request," Newport set sail in his ship— the Susan 
Constant — bearing with him a scathing letter 
from Smith to the council at home, pointing out 
the absurdity of their directions and criticisms 
and inclosing a map of the country to prove how 
much had been done in exploring that unknown 
territory. We must quote the letter at full length, 
for in its ringing eloquence, its hard common 
sense, its brave rebuking of the ignorant, if well- 
meaning, men at home, it is a necessary document 
in estimating the character of its author : 

''Right Honourable, &€. I received your letter, 
wherein you write, that our minds are so set upon 
faction, and idle conceits in dividing the country with- 
out your consents, and that we feed you but with ifs 
and ands, hopes and some few proofes ; as if we would 



TAKES THE PRESIDENCY 20I 

keepe the mystery of the businesse to ourselves; and 
that we must expressly follow your instructions sent by 
Captain Newport : the charge of whose voyage amounts 
to neare two thousand pounds, the which, if we cannot 
defray by the ship's returne, we are like to remaine 
as banished men. To these particulars I humbly in- 
treat your pardons if I offend you with my rude 
answer. 

** For our factions, unlesse you would have me run 
away and leave the country, I cannot prevent them : 
because / do make many stay that would els Jly any 
whether. For the idle letter sent to my Lord of Salis- 
bury, by the President and his confederats, for divid- 
ing the country, &c., — what it was I know not, for 
you saw no hand of mine to it, nor even dreamt I 
of any such matter. That we feed you with hopes, 
&c. — Though I be no scholar^ I am past a schoolboy; 
and I desire but to know, what neither you , and these here 
doe know, but that I have learned to tell you by the con- 
tinuall hazard of my life. I have not concealed from, 
you any thing I knozv; but I feare some cause you to 
believe much more tJia^i is true. 

" Expressly to follow your directions by Captaine 
Newport, though they be performed, / was directly 
against it; but according to our commission I was con- 
tent to be overruled by the major part of the councell, 
I feare to the hazard of us all ; which now is generally 
confessed when it is too late. Onely Captaine Winne 
and Captain Waldo I have sworne of the councell, 
and crowned Powhatan according to your instructions. 



202 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

''For the charge of this voyage of two or three thou- 
sand pounds, we have not received the value of an hun- 
dred pounds. And for the quartred boat to be borne 
by the souldiers over the falles, Newport had 120 of 
the best men he could chuse. If he had burnt her to 
ashes, one might have carried her i7i a bag, but as she is, 
five hu7idred cannot, to a navigable place above the 
falles. And for him at that time to find in the South 
Sea a mine of gold ; or any of them sent by Sir Walter 
Raleigh: at our consultation I told them was as likely 
as the rest. But during this great discovery of thirtie 
myles (which might as well have been done by one 
man, and much more, for the value of a pound of copper 
at a seasonable tyme) they had the pinnace and all the 
boats with them, but one that remained with me to 
serve the fort. In their absence I followed the new 
begun works of pitch and tarre, glasse, sope-ashes and 
clapboard, whereof some small quantities we have sent 
you. But if you rightly consider what an infinite toyle 
it is in Russia and Swethland, where the woods are 
proper for naught els, and though there be the helpe 
both of man and beast in those ancient commonwealths, 
which many an hundred yeares have used it, yet thou- 
sands of those poore people can scarce get necessaries 
to live, but from hand to mouth. And though your 
factors there can buy as much in a week as will fraught 
you a ship, or as much as you please ; you must not 
expect from us any such matter, which are but as many 
of ignorant miserable soules, that are scarce able to get 
wherewith to live, and defend ourselves against the in- 



TAKES THE PRESIDENCY 203 

constant salvages : finding here and there a tree fit for 
the purpose, and want all things els the Russians have. 
For the coronation of Powhata7ty — by whose advice 
you sent him such presents, I know not ; but this give 
me leave to tell you, I feare they will be the confusion 
of us all ere we heare from you agane. At your ship's 
arrivall the salvages' harvest was newly gathered, and 
we going to buy it, our owne not being halfe sufficient 
for so great a number. As for the two ships' loading of 
corne Newport promised to provide us from Powhatan, 
he brought us but fourteen bushels, and from the Mona- 
cans nothing, but the most of the men sicke and neare 
famished. From your ship we had not provision in 
victuals worth twenty pound, and we are more than 
two hundred to live upon this : the one-halfe sicke, the 
other little better. For the saylers (I confesse) they 
daily make good cheare; but our diet is a little meale 
and water, and not sufficient of that. TJwugh there be 
fish ifi the sea, foules hi the aire, and beasts in the woods, 
their bounds are so large, they so wilde, and we so weake 
and ignorant, we cannot much trouble them- Captain 
Newport we must suspect to be the author of those in- 
ventions. Now, that you sJioitldknow, I have made you 
as great a discovery as lie, for lesse charge than he 
spendeth you every meale ; I have sent you this mappe 
of the bay and rivers, with an annexed relation of the 
countries and nations that inhabit them, as you may see 
at large. Also two barrels of stones, and such as I 
take to be good iron ore at the least ; so divided, as by 
their notes you may see in what places I found them. 



204 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

The souldiers say many of your officers maintaine their 
famihes out of that you sent us : and that Newport hath 
an hundred pounds a yeare for carrying newes. For 
every master you have yet sent can find the way as 
well as he, so that an hundred pounds might be spared, 
which is more than we have all, that helps to pay him 
wages. Capt. Ratcliffe is now called Sicklemore, a 
poore counterfeited imposture. I have sent you him 
home, least the company should cut his throat. What 
he is now, every one can tell you : if he and Archer 
returne againe they are sufficient to keepe us alwayes 
in factions. When you send againe I entreat you 
rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardi- 
ners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons and diggers up of 
trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as 
we have ; for except we be able both to lodge them 
and feed them, the most will consume with want of 
necessaries before they can be made good for any 
thing. Thus if you please to consider this account, and 
the unnecessary wages to Captaine Newport, or his 
ships so long lingering and staying here (for notwith- 
standing his boasting to leave us victuals for 12 months, 
though we had 89 by this discovery lame and sicke, 
and but a pint of corne a day for a man, we were con- 
strained to give him three hogsheads of that to victual 
him homeward), or yet to send into Germany or Pole- 
land for glasse men and the rest, till we be able to sus- 
tain ourselves, and releeve them when they come, — it 
were better to give five hundred pound a tun for these 
grosse commodities in Denmarke than send for them 



TAKES THE PRESIDENCY 205 

hither, till more necessary things be provided. For in 
over toyling our weake and unskilful bodies, to satisfie 
this desire of present profit, we can scarce even recover 
ourselves from one supply to another. And I humbly 
intreat you hereafter, let us know what we should 
receive, and not stand to the saylers' courtesie to leave 
us what they please, els you may charge us what 
you will, but we not you with any thing. These are 
the causes that have kept us in Virginia from laying 
such a foundation, that ere this might have given much 
better content and satisfaction : but as yet you must 
not looke for any profitable returne : So I humbly 
rest." 

Newport gone, Smith once more took up the 
great food-problem. First he extorted supplies 
from the Indians who had promised him the four 
hundred bushels, and returned in time to be pres- 
ent at the marriage ceremony already spoken of. 
Other supplies were had from Indians near the 
Appomattox, and then it was resolved that some 
desperate measures should be taken. 



13 



CHAPTER XVII 

HOW CAPTAIN SMITH FOUGHT AGAINST FAMINE, 
IGNORANCE, TREACHERY, AND INDIANS, TO PRE- 
SERVE THE COLONY — HIS DEPARTURE^ AND THE 
" STARVING TIME " 

IT was believed Powhatan had plenty of grain, 
and Captain Smith proposed to go and take 
it, since Powhatan by forbidding trade had 
brought them to the necessity. But this project 
was voted down by the council. Just then came 
a message from the chief asking to have work- 
men sent to build him a house, and saying that if 
they would do this, give him a grindstone and 
some other things, he would in return load their 
boat with corn. He especially asked that Captain 
Smith should come in person ; and Smith, though 
distrustful, decided it was best to go. He called 
for volunteers, and with the pinnace, two barges, 
and forty-six men set out, after having sent la- 
borers by land to build the house as requested. 

They were seven days at Kecoughtan, where 

206 



THE " STARVING TIME " 207 

they kept Christmas (the old Christmas, that was 
kept about the 5th of January), and then, despite 
warnings received from the Indians, went on, 
nearly frozen by day and by night, and landed at 
their destination by wading through icy water up 
to their middles. Arrived before Powhatan, he 
pretended not to know why they had come, and 
made sport of them; but the double-dealer was 
brought sharply to book by Captain Smith's stern 
resolve to have corn or take it. 

Some of the Dutch sent to the chief had, as was 
later discovered, made up their minds that the set- 
tlers were sure to be destroyed, and so turned 
traitor, revealing the sore straits of the colonists ; 
and therefore Powhatan tried to carry things with 
a high hand, even attempting to capture Captain 
Smith, who by threats, making a bold show, broke 
through the Indians and regained his boats. In 
spite of Powhatan's attempts to patch up a peace. 
Smith would not return, but was detained over- 
night by the stranding of his boats. 

That night came Pocahontas secretly through 
the woods and warned the English an attack 
would be made, after some provisions should be 
sent to throw them " off their guard." She re- 
fused any reward, saying, with tears running 



2o8 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

down her cheeks, that " she durst not be seen to 
have any, for if Powhatan should know it, she 
were but dead '^ ; and so she ran away by herself 
as she had come. The feast arrived, and after 
taking the precaution of making the bringers 
taste every dish. Captain Smith sent word to Pow- 
hatan to come as soon as he pleased — that they 
were ready for him. The night was spent in 
watching, and in the morning they set sail. 

Meanwhile, as later appeared, Powhatan had 
sent the treacherous Dutch to the fort, and by 
pretending they came from Captain Smith these 
secured a large number of weapons and some 
more renegades, led away by Powhatan's prom- 
ises. 

Smith and his party went on to Pamunkey, 
hoping to get food from Opechancanough ; and 
this wily chief kept them in pleasant converse until 
he had surrounded Smith and his fifteen men with 
some seven hundred savages. This discovered. 
Smith encouraged his men, and bade them resolve 
to stand to the last, and then challenged the chief 
to single combat. The chief made parley, and pre- 
tended to have a present brought to the doorway, 
asking the captain to receive it. But Smith saw 
this was but a plan to lure him out of the house. 



THE " STARVING TIME " 209 

and suddenly commanded three of his men to 
guard the doorway, while he seized Opechanca- 
nough by the hair and presented a pistol at his 
breast. This made the plucky captain master of 
the situation, and a truce was made, and they se- 
cured some corn. There was another alarm, but 
it likewise passed over, and the object of their 
journey was accomplished. 

While they were still at this place, there came 
from the fort a messenger with a remarkable 
story. He said that Scrivener and ten others, 
going out in a boat, had been drowned ; and that, 
coming to bring this news, he had stopped at 
Powhatan's village, where he had seen such war- 
like preparations as promised mischief. He had 
escaped by the aid of Pocahontas, who had hidden 
him for a time, and had then sent his pursuers 
upon a wrong trail. 

Thus for the third time was Pocahontas a 
friend in need to the English. 

Smith thought best to conceal this adventure 
and warning from his men, but hastened his de- 
parture, leaving that very night. On the follow- 
ing day the Indians endeavored to draw the 
English into an ambuscade; but Smith, suspect- 
ing this, laid an ambuscade of his own, and so 



2IO CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

defeated their purpose. That night Smith sent 
two of his men to Jamestown in one of his boats ; 
and the Indians, imagining he was sending for re- 
inforcements to destroy them and their town, 
brought baskets of corn through frost and snow 
for fiYt or six days. An attempt was made to 
poison Smith and several others, but though they 
were made violently sick they recovered, and the 
captain caught and publicly beat the chief's son, 
who was believed to be the poisoner. 

So, one way and another, with endless diploma- 
cies, threatenings, and devices, the corn on which 
the lives of the colonists depended was brought 
together; but, as the '' Historic " says, if all this 
had been attended to at the time of Newport's 
wild-goose chase after the Monacan nation, there 
would have been no trouble in obtaining enough 
to have freighted a ship of forty tons. The reason 
there had been so much forbearance on the part 
of the English— they call it " temporizing "—was 
the hope of surprising Powhatan and taking his 
store of corn ; but when spies were sent to prepare 
for this, it was discovered that those " damned " 
Dutchmen (surely this is one of the oaths the Re- 
cording Angel will blot out with a tear!) warned 
him, and Powhatan had removed, leaving his 




OLD CHURCH TOWER, JAMESTOWN 



THE "starving TIME " 213 

people so hostile that the spies hardly escaped 
alive. 

The expedition, however, had secured enough 
to keep forty-six men for six weeks, securing two 
hundred pounds of deer and four hundred and 
seventy-nine bushels of corn. The historians of 
the colony end their chapter here with an excuse 
for having made so poor a showing in comparison 
with the Spanish colonies in America, pointing 
out that the lands in which they found themselves 
and the people with whom they dealt were very 
different from those of the more southern colo- 
nies. And they ask with pride : '' How many ever 
with such small means did ever discover so many 
fair arid navigable rivers, and subject so many 
several kings, people, and nations to obedience 
and contribution with so little bloodshed? " 

The return to Jamestown again proved the 
most depressing part of their enterprises, since 
they found supplies either spoiled or at a low ebb, 
and a great part of their arms and tools gone, by 
the Dutchmen's treachery, to the Indians. They 
thought, however, that what they brought was 
sufficient to insure them against starving till next 
harvest, and so turned their thoughts to other 
matters. 



214 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

The settlers were divided into working squads 
of ten or fifteen, and after six hours' work a day, 
were allowed to devote the rest of the time to pas- 
times and merry exercises. Nevertheless a fair 
proportion of work was exacted from each, Smith 
grimly assuring all in a public address that there 
were now no more '' councilors to protect them,'' 
and establishing a bulletin board upon which the 
reports of each man's performances were made 
public. 

Is it possible, in considering these practical 
measures, to escape the conclusion that if Smith 
had been in control from the beginning the lives 
of those lost in all these long months might have 
been saved ? 

Despite Smith's good management, however, 
he was unable to find out the thieves who were 
stealing arms, tools, and other things from the 
stores, and delivering them to the Dutch traitors 
with Powhatan. These men even laid a plot to 
capture Captain Smith. The attempt failed, and 
the spy from Powhatan escaped. But Smith sent 
twenty men after him, and was returning alone 
when he met the '' King of Paspahegh, a most 
strong stout savage." This Indian tried hard to 
induce Smith to accompany him, meaning to be- 



a .„.,^ „,_,„?? 



THE STARVING TIME 21 5 

tray him to those in hiding. Smith refused, 
and the Indian, seeing him armed only with 
a sword, grappled him after having attempted 
to shoot him with one of the stolen guns or 
pistols. In their grapple neither could use a 
weapon, and they rolled into the river, the In- 
dian meaning to drown him. Smith had hold 
of the Indian's throat, and strangled him until 
he was helpless. He was then about to behead 
him when the chief begged for his life, and was 
taken to the fort and put in chains. Here soon 
afterward the Dutch renegade was brought, and 
tried for treachery. But while Smith was ar- 
ranging an exchange of the captured Indian for 
the Dutchmen with Powhatan, the Indian es- 
caped, and though pursued regained his own peo- 
ple. An expedition sent to retake him contented 
itself with a few volleys, and returned; and then 
followed a petty warfare, in which several Indians 
were killed, their houses and canoes burned, and 
their fishing-nets destroyed. Finally peace was 
concluded, because otherwise the Indians threat- 
ened to abandon the country — saying they could 
plant anywhere; and there was no more trouble 
with the Paspaheghs so long as Smith remained 
in the country. 



2l6 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

With others there were still difficulties. Two 
young Chickahominy Indians, brothers, were 
charged with stealing a pistol. One was released 
and told to return the pistol or the brother 
would be hanged within twelve hours. The other 
prisoner was left in a room with a charcoal fire to 
warm him ; and when the pistol was promptly re- 
turned and the English came to release him, he 
was found suffocated by the fumes of the char- 
coal. 

When his brother broke into lamentations, he 
was told (possibly in hope of what followed) that 
the dead man should be restored to life, and this 
" miracle " was accomplished by rubbing the pa- 
tient with brandy and vinegar. The poor fellow's 
wits were still disordered, and then Smith prom- 
ised to remove this trouble also — a promise easily 
performed by allowing the sick Indian a night's 
rest by the fire. 

Naturally enough these men reported to their 
own people that the all-accomplished Smith could 
restore the dead to life, and thus another cause for 
reverencing and fearing him was added. 

The explosion of some gunpowder which an In- 
dian was trying to dry out in a breastplate, killed 
several of the natives, and the reputation of these 



THE ''starving TIME " 21/ 

marvels and others like them brought about a last- 
ing peace during which the colonists flourished. 

Three months of quiet work enabled the colo- 
nists properly directed to do much. They es- 
tablished the industries that had been planned — 
among other things glass-making. They dug a 
well within the walls of their fort; built twenty 
houses, and roofed the church ; wove nets for fish- 
ing; built a blockhouse on the neck of land lead- 
ing to Jamestown peninsula, to pass which was 
forbidden without the president's order; digged 
and planted many acres, and raised hogs and 
chickens. Another blockhouse was placed near 
the mouth of the bay to give timely notice of the 
approach of shipping, and besides all this the set- 
tlers cut down trees and made a quantity of clap- 
boards. 

But now it was found that the ship-rats had 
ruined most of their corn, and again the problem 
of food became pressing. This necessity was met 
by taking advantage of every eatable the land af- 
forded—animal or vegetable; but Captain Smith 
and his faithful aides had much trouble to keep 
the idle from giving all they had to the Indians for 
corn and fruit. The president had to make most 
stringent rules that all should gather as much 



2l8 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

as he himself would do each day, on pain of ban- 
ishment from the settlement. Grumbling there 
was in plenty, but of some two hundred but seven 
died in these three months of scarcity. A few 
were sent to the Indians to be cared for, and were 
well treated ; others ran away, and were returned 
to the fort by natives, who refused to support idle 
mouths, having learned this lesson from the dis- 
cipline enforced at the fort. 

Two exploring expeditions were despatched to 
get news of any Roanoke colony survivors, but 
could find no traces of white men nor signs of any 
passage to the South Sea. 

All this time the traitor Dutchmen were in- 
triguing to destroy the colony, as was revealed to 
Smith by certain of their confederates within the 
settlement; but it was impossible to apprehend 
them, though Powhatan professed he would not 
protect the traitors from the colonists. Besides, 
Captain Smith had made himself so strong with 
the neighboring Indians that he no longer feared 
these men nor Powhatan himself, and therefore 
did not care to carry matters to a conclusion. 

On July TO, 1 609, arrived a ship under command 
of Captain Argall, sent by one Master Cornelius 
to trade with the colony and to fish for sturgeon. 



THE "starving TIME " 219 

As the vessel had been well provisioned, the colo- 
nists insisted upon retaining it until the arrival of 
an expedition Argall reported to be on the way. 
Argall told them that one object of this new " sup- 
ply " party was to reprimand and control Captain 
Smith for his hard dealing with the savages and 
for not returning the ships freighted ! 

This " third supply *' sailed from England in 
May, 1609, bringing a new commission or charter, 
meant to make all straight in Virginia so far as 
pen and ink combined with ignorance could do so. 
It happened that the three leaders of the fleet 
(eight ships) squabbled as to which ship should 
contain each of them, and at length agreed to 
come all in a single vessel, — the Sea Venture, — 
and this flag-ship was by a hurricane driven to the 
Bermudas, leaving the real direction of matters in 
the hands of our old friends Ratcliffe, Martin, 
Archer, and five other captains who had never 
been in Virginia and so were ready to believe all 
that was told them to the disadvantage of Captain 
Smith. 

When the fleet was sighted, Captain Smith be- 
lieved that the fleet meant the long-expected at- 
tempt of the Spaniards to destroy the English col- 
ony. " Had it been so, we had been happy,'' the 



220 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

historian writes; for they were ready for the at- 
tacks of open foemen, and trusted with the In- 
dians' help to have held their own. But " receiv- 
ing these as our countrymen and friends, they did 
what they could to murder our president, to sur- 
prise the store, the fort, and our lodgings, to usurp 
the government, and make us all their servants 
and slaves till thev could consume us and our re- 
membrance; and rather indeed to supplant us 
than supply us." 

The only thing that saved the colony was the 
absence of the new commission to supersede that 
under which Smith was holding office. When the 
new-comers, a worthless rabble of ne'er-do-wells 
under control of his mischievous enemies, made 
themselves too troublesome, they were sternly 
checked, and the chief of them imprisoned. For 
Smith now had the confidence and loyal support 
of the best men in the colony, and very sensibly 
refused to give up his office until his year of ser- 
vice was expired. 

When his time was nearly up, he made a choice 
of evils by offering the presidency to Martin ; but, 
with some remnant of decency, Martin resigned 
all claim within three hours, and went peaceably 
away to begin a new settlement at Nansemund, 



THE "starving TIME " 221 

leaving the real master in control. This indepen- 
dent experiment soon proved Martin's incompe- 
tence, for having quarreled with the natives, he 
was attacked and driven away with the loss of 
most of his provisions in spite of a reinforcement 
sent from Jamestown. Martin came back with 
these soldiers, leaving his settlers to shift for 
themselves. 

Another party sent to the falls on the James 
River, under Captain West, managed as badly; 
and when Captain Smith with five men went up 
the river to set things right, not only refused his 
aid, but mutinied against his authority, and forced 
him to return to the fort. Whereupon the Indians 
rose against the settlers at this outlying post, and, 
with a war-party of twelve braves, destroyed the 
settlement and drove one hundred and twenty 
Englishmen in panic through the woods. These 
fugitives found Captain Smith, whose boat was 
aground, and under his protection went back, 
were reestablished in a new site, and peace was 
made with the savages. 

This settlement was called Non-such, and oc- 
cupied the site of Richmond; but shortly after- 
ward it was abandoned, and the settlers went 
back to their old location. 



222' CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Captain Smith, the ship having already gone, 
started in his boat for Jamestown; and on his way 
home, as he lay sleeping, a bag of gunpowder was 
accidentally (let us hope it zvas an accident) ex- 
ploded, and the captain was so injured and burned 
that he leaped overboard, and was only rescued 
with the greatest difficulty, being nearly drowned. 
Tortured by his wounds, he completed the hun- 
dred miles' journey to Jamestown, and took to his 
bed. 

When the time set for the trial of Ratcliffe and 
Archer approached, it is said that they tried to 
have Smith murdered in his bed; " but his heart 
did faile him that should have given fire to that 
merciless pistol." 

The pistol was hardly necessary; for in his 
weakness Captain Smith's spirit was broken. He 
refused to let his followers take vengeance on his 
enemies, resigned his office, brought about the ap- 
pointment of George Percy, an honest, capable 
gentleman, in his stead, and arranged to sail for 
England in one of the vessels that was about to 
leave. 

Of Captain Smith, the writer of the history here 
asks : '' What shall I say but thus we lost him that 
in all his proceedings made justice his first guide 



THE ''starving TIME '' 223 

and experience his second; ever hating baseness, 
sloth, pride, and unworthiness more than any 
dangers; that never allowed more for himself 
than his soldiers with him; that upon no danger 
would send them where he would not lead them 
himself; that would never see us want what he 
had or could by any means get us; that would 
rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay ; 
that loved action more than words, and hated 
falsehood and covetousness worse than death; 
whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss 
our deaths? " 

These are strong, brave words ; but they would 
have been mere words except for the light thrown 
upon them by the subsequent history of James- 
town. It is useless to deny the claims of Captain 
Smith to the credit of having established and 
maintained the colony, for upon his departure we 
know what happened. Fortunately, we are not 
compelled to read again the terrible annals of 
the " Starving Time." It will be enough to re- 
call that in half a year the five hundred colonists 
had been reduced to sixty, and these, after being 
forced to cannibalism to sustain life, were only 
preserved from extinction by the coming of the 
missing ship's company from the Bermudas — its 

14 



224 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

escape being one of the most romantic and re- 
markable episodes of history. Upon the account 
of its voyage it is beheved that Shakspere's 
'' The Tempest " is founded. 

No other commentary than tl)e fate of the set- 
tlers after his departure can say so much for the 
value of Captain Smith to the first English colony 
in America — the root and spring whence our 
nation is derived. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE SETTLERS AFTER SMITH 's DEPARTURE 

IT is unfortunate that in history we cannot take 
up one subject and complete it; but nothing 
can be fully understood by itself. The life of the 
English captain, John Smith, now reaches a 
period when for a few years, at least, he remained 
in England without taking part in any exciting 
adventures ; and yet to know what he had been to 
the Virginian colonists we should carefully study 
the colony as he left it and note the disasters that 
came thick and fast as soon as his guiding hand 
was removed from the wheel. 

That a new steersman to guide the little Ship of 
State was not easy to find we may see by the list of 
those who were tried. In rapid succession came 
Percy, Gates, Delaware, Percy again, Dale, Gates 
again, Dale again, Yeardley — all in six years, and 
these six years were a time of warfare with the 
Indians and scarcity only relieved by supplies 

from England. The attempts to settle other 

225 



2 26 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

places had to be abandoned, for the Indians drove 
back all outlying settlers. Ratcliffe set out, with 
a party of thirty or forty, to trade with Powhatan, 
was caught in an Indian ambuscade, and only one 
or two stragglers survived — one being saved in 
captivity by Pocahontas. Ratcliffe himself fell 
into his enemies' hands, and was tortured to death. 
The colony at Jamestown became a cluster of half- 
burned ruins, amid which a few starving wretches 
crawled about in despair, living upon whatever 
they could find — no matter how loathsome. The 
story of their sufferings during the Starving 
Time is too horrible to tell. The remnant was 
saved, as has been said, when on the point of put- 
ting to sea in the pinnace, by the coming of the 
missing men from the Bermudas. 

But all this must be looked for in the histories 
of Virginia. Only one more colonial episode 
needs to be here recorded, and that only because 
it concerns Pocahontas. 

In April, 1613, Pocahontas, while on a visit to 
the Potomac Indians, was invited aboard the ship 
of Captain Argall, an English adventurer in the 
service of the Virginia colony, and so treacher- 
ously captured, her companions being bribed to 
sell her by the gift of a copper kettle. Then word 



THE SZ771ZR5 AFTER SMITH S DEPARTITRZ 

was sent to Powhatan that she w ' r 

if he would surrender i.' Z 7 : .^ r : 

give up all the 7 ^ ar.l s.viris ::. ssess 

Powhata:: re:u-7 r : :;:as w^ 

captivit} u::: .le was niarrei : '"- -: : 
widower— ^ : :: : '/.:/- v:; 

ranged by :::e Zr^\ ^ r; r :: t 
thehire :hs: : ^ :;- :: St 

peace with :he ;e:; e :: P: ~.'.: :\ 

ria^e :::k place :^ -- : :_ : : t rres^ 

thers. ar.i ?. :reatv was r. t :. ._ ifter^. 



he arrived 1.:"'!:"^. or just 1-: :rr :: ex*—^^"- 
dinarih- lore \^ ..ard winter, ir.e : ?-: > 

edly kept iii_:-:rs a man so seriiusly ::. . :. ^ .:.i 
weakened as Srr ' :'^ r: v - : ! ' e ' e e : _ r : " : 1 : -i 
his life was inac::.r. : : r : ..c.- ^ :: 

his tirre to reading anci v.riiiiig. for in i_:- ..e 
pubHshed the boc4^ called *' A ^lap of Virginia, 
with a Description of the Countr\%'' the second 
part of which, " The Proceedings of the EngHsh 
Colony in \'irginia,*' was a compilation of the 



228 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

narrative of some of those who had been Smith's 
faithful followers and friends. These histories 
must have taken up much of the captain's time, 
but we hear nothing of him until we find 
him engaged in a commercial and exploring ex- 
pedition to the more northern coast of America 
— a region to which he then gave the name of 
'' New England," one of those names that with- 
out finding place upon the map takes its place in 
history and thereby often lives the longer in song, 
story, and tradition. 

The two ships left London and went to an 
island Smith calls Monahigan (which after an 
attempt to call it Barty has now resumed the 
Indian name Monhegan), and there they expected 
to make a profitable voyage by taking whales, dis- 
covering gold- or copper-mines, or at least by se- 
curing fish and furs. Their voyage across the 
ocean took them two months, and then they 
sought whales, seeing many of an inferior sort, 
and spending much time in chasing them without 
success. The gold-mines did not appear, and 
Smith says the shipmaster had only pretended a 
knowledge of them in order to be hired; but the 
small fish, especially cod, were taken in great 
numbers, and Smith, by a boat expedition, secured 




SECTION OF Till': MAP OK \'1R(;I\1A 
From Caplain John Smith's " Generall Historic (jf Virginia" 



THE SETTLERS AFTER SMITH S DEPARTURE 23 1 

" 1 100 beaver-skins, lOO martens, as many otters, 
and the most of them within a distance of twenty 
leagues," amounting to some £1500 in value; and 
then they returned to England, having been 
absent about half a year. 

After his return Captain Smith made a map of 
the coast, and within a year or two this was pre- 
sented to Prince Charles, with a request that he 
would name the features of the land. The names 
chosen by the prince included many with which 
we are now familiar, — among them being Charles 
River, Cape Ann, Hull, Boston, Ipswich, and 
Cambridge, — but Cape Cod, for which the prince 
proposed to substitute the name Cape James, has 
remained unspoiled by the royal godfather. 

During Captain Smith's absence — most mis- 
chievous deeds seem to be done while the captain 
is away — Captain Hunt kidnapped twenty-four 
Indians whom he carried off and sold into slavery. 
Smith thinks this was done to make trouble with 
the Indians and thus to prevent the establishing 
of a colony. It is very doubtful, however, that 
Captain Hunt required any other motive for his 
villainy than the fact of receiving for each Indian 
a snug sum of money when they were delivered 
to the Spanish. 



232 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

On his way homeward Smith stopped at Ply- 
mouth, England, and there made an arrangement 
to go out with four ships to found a New England 
colony ; and therefore felt bound to refuse another 
chance that came to him after he reached London. 
The Londoners had fitted four vessels for a fish- 
ing-trip, and were provoked that Smith preferred 
to keep his promise to the Plymouth enterprise. 
Smith sufitered for his good faith, for when he 
appeared at Plymouth, the expedition had been 
abandoned because of the return unsuccessful of 
another Plymouth vessel. 

This was a ship despatched to seek a gold-mine 
reported to exist not far from Cape Cod. There 
was a captive Indian named Epenew, or Epenow, 
brought home in an English ship, commanded by 
a Captain Harlow. Epenow had been made a 
show in London and elsewhere because of his 
stature ; and his mind seems to have been quite as 
well developed as his body, for he told marvelous 
stories of this mine, volunteered to guide an expe- 
dition to it, and, when the coast of New England 
was reached, jumped overboard and swam ashore, 
while the captain and crew shot at him so wildly 
as to wound only themselves. When the vessel 
came home empty, the merchants of Plymouth lost 



THE SETTLERS AFTER SMITH S DEPARTURE 233 

interest in the New World, and broke their prom- 
ises to Captain Smith. 

But the plucky man was not to be disappointed, 
and with the help of a few friends he succeeded 
in securing two small vessels and a small party, 
sixteen, and organized an expedition of his own. 
At the outset, the bigger ship was dismasted and 
compelled to return, while the other proceeded 
alone, not knowing its companion had put back. 
Smith at once prepared a smaller vessel and again 
set sail with about thirty men — his colonists and 
fourteen sailors — on June 20, 161 5. 

Having made a bad beginning that should have 
insured a good ending. Smith might well have 
complained of the next piece of ill fortune that he 
encountered. Down upon his little vessel de- 
scended one double the size — a pirate craft com- 
manded by an Englishman named Fry, a craft 
well armed with cannon and swarming with men. 
Smith's men had no notion of resisting, but Cap- 
tain Smith was not of the surrendering type, and 
made conditions — one being that the pirates were 
to take nothing that would interfere with his colo- 
nizing. If his conditions were not accepted Cap- 
tain Smith declared he would sink his vessel. 

While the discussion went on, it came out that a 



234 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

large number of the pirates were runaway soldiers 
from Tunis, and some were of Smith's old com- 
mand ; and thereupon they not only refused to rob 
him, but begged that Smith would take command 
of them, or offered to convey his ship where he 
chose. All these offers Smith refused, even re- 
maining in his cabin rather than see any of the 
pirate crew, old comrades though they were. 
And so the ships parted company. 

Is not this just the sort of story Captain Smith's 
critics would have declared an absurd piece of 
brag? Can you not imagme their pomtmg out its 
deliciously farcical nature? Pirates, forsooth, so 
impressed by the heroic Smith that they let him 
sail away scot-free because he had been their com- 
mander! — and this in spite of his treating them 
with contempt and refusing even to receive their 
homage? But Captain Smith, knowing the story 
would seem unlikely, has used, instead of his own 
narrative, legal testimony given by some eight 
men who were on board his vessel at the time. 

From the same source comes also the account of 
a second meeting with pirates of another stamp 
— two ships, French this time. Again the more 
prudent advised surrender, and again Smith 
threatened to destroy his ship first, saying he 



THE SETTLERS AFTER SMITH's DEPARTURE 235 

would set fire to her magazine. Compelled thus 
to resistance, the little ship was put under way, 
and after a time escaped, though often fired upon. 

Life at sea was not monotonous in those times, 
and soon afterward their vessel was chased by 
four French men-of-war. This time Captain 
Smith yielded to counsel, and went aboard the 
flag-ship to show his papers, was carried off, his 
ship rifled, and his men distributed among the 
French crews. This was a high-handed proceed- 
ing, considering that the French were sailing un- 
der their king's commission, and declared they 
were only fighting Portuguese, Spaniards, and pi- 
rates. They repented their course apparently, for 
they surrendered the ship and stores again within 
five or six days. But some of Smith's party so 
managed that they sailed away in his ship without 
him, leaving him, stripped of most of his property, 
on the French commander's ship. Smith, taking 
up the story, says he was kept for fear he might 
revenge himself, if set free, upon the French colo- 
nists in Newfoundland; besides, his crew were 
very likely sick of the voyage and its many dan- 
gers, for they at once returned to Plymouth, and 
made as bad a report against Smith as they dared. 

The French continued their cruise, while the 



236 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

captive captain devoted himself to writing his 
"Description of New England," — "to keep my 
perplexed thoughts from too much meditation 
of my miserable estate," as he says. The ship in 
which he was captive became separated from the 
rest of the fleet, and here were pursued by an Eng- 
glish pirate in distress for food. With him, after 
some trouble, peace was made. Next they cap- 
tured a small English fishing-vessel, robbed it of 
half its fish, and took the sailors' property, which 
was sold at auction near the mainmast for a piti- 
ful sum. A Scotch merchantman was taken, but 
while pillaging it four larger vessels were seen. 
These were chased, but when they hove to and 
hoisted flags. Smith says, " our French spirits 
were content only to perceive they were English 
red crosses," and so the French drew off. En- 
gagements followed with four Spaniards, who 
were injured, but were not robbed because the 
French dared not board ; a caravel of Brazil that 
yielded when half her men were wounded, and 
gave up 370 chests of sugar ; and then they took 
a large Spanish galleon. This was a rich prize, 
and they found in her cargo " 1200 hides, 50 
chests of cochineal ; fourteen coffers of wedges of 
silver; 800 reals of 8 ["pieces of eight," silver 



THE SETTLERS AFTER SMITH S DEPARTURE 237 

coins], and six coffers of the King of Spain's trea- 
sure, besides the pillage and coffers [trunks] of 
many rich passengers." 

During the attacks upon Spaniards, Smith ad- 
mits he managed the fights; but he remained a 
prisoner, taking no part, when English ships were 
attacked. 

These selected incidents show the sort of cruise 
upon which Smith was carried; but after some 
three months, or about November, 161 5, they ar- 
rived off* the coast of France. There they refused 
to release their prisoner, upon the pretense that 
he had taken part in a raid against French colonies 
in Nova Scotia. They required him to swear he 
had been concerned in this or else they would keep 
him prisoner. Their object was to have some jus- 
tification for their treatment of him, for they 
feared he would claim damages against them, or a 
part of the proceeds of their captures. 

Having this alternative before him. Smith con- 
cluded to solve their riddle by escaping their 
hands. During a violent storm, he stole a boat 
and put out from the ship, hoping to drift ashore. 
The wind changed, he was driven to sea, and for 
twelve hours kept afloat only by constant bailing. 
The boat finally went ashore on an oozy island, 



238 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

where the water-soaked captain was rescued by 
certain sportsmen. 

Pawning the boat, Smith made his way to Ro- 
chelle, and there learned of the wreck of the vessel 
from which he had escaped, and the death of her 
captain and half the crew. Captain Smith made 
complaints to the proper authorities, and received 
'' fair words," though little else. 

He met many kind friends, however, and by 
them was helped to Plymouth. He vigorously 
prosecuted those who had betrayed him, and se- 
cured the imprisonment of the ringleaders in 
order to clear his name from the imputations of 
piracy that had been circulated about him. 

The companion vessel of Smith's expedition — it 
will be remembered that she sailed away suppos- 
ing he would follow — completed her voyage to 
America, arriving in May ; and then brought back 
a good cargo (of fish?) in August, all on board 
being in good health. 



CHAPTER XIX 

HIS LAST ENTERPRISE — SMITH AS A WRITER- 
CONCLUSION 

SMITH tells us that there was great rivalry 
in the trade with the New World between 
London and Plymouth, and this prevented the 
merchants of the two places from uniting in their 
enterprises — a course he advised, since the Lon- 
doners had more capital, while the West Country 
men had the better haven from which to begin the 
voyage. Still, many ships were sent out, eight 
having sailed before his return from his captivity. 
During the years 1616 and 161 7 Captain 
Smith was busy enlisting aid for his colonizing 
projects, and at length, by dint of persuasion, ar- 
gument, the distribution of his books and maps, 
and personal influence. Smith secured a fleet of 
twenty sail, and was appointed Admiral of N^ew 
England. But contrary winds and other draw- 
backs prevented anything but two fishing-voyages 

to the Banks of Newfoundland, fairly success- 

239 



240 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

ful, but a disappointment to Smith's ambitions. 
For Captain Smith was one of the few men in 
England who had had both the brains and the op- 
portunity to foresee the value of acquiring control 
of the New World. 

While thus advocating his plans, Smith went to 
Brentford, and there met Pocahontas, who had 
come to England with her husband. For a long 
time she refused to look at Smith or to speak to 
him. The reason for this was discovered to be 
her belief that he was dead — as, indeed, she had 
been told. Why she was so deceived, we can only 
guess. It may be that here is the one hint of any 
romance between them. If there was a tenderer 
feeling than friendship, it was on her side. Cap- 
tain Smith was anything but sentimental, and 
I can find no suggestion of any love-affairs 
in any part of his life, though several women 
were at times very helpful and considerate of 
him. 

When Pocahontas had made up her mind to 
speak, she claimed the right to call him '' father," 
saying that Smith when a stranger in her land 
had so called Powhatan. But Captain Smith 
" durst not allow that title because she was a 
King's daughter," and King James had already 




fHtlC^-^ 



(S^Vto'toa^du J\.CDecka, diuiattof^ to tfu. ,mujffify' zPfH,.- 




iJDa/sJculj, 



ConifmriJioUanl cxcuJ 



POCAHONTAS 

From the engraving in the first edition of John Smith's 
" Generall Historic of Virginia " 



smith's last enterprise 243 

shown resentment toward Rolfe for marrying 
into a " royal " family ! 

Pocahontas reproached him for his fear, re- 
minding him that he had gone fearlessly into Pow- 
hatan's land. She insisted upon her rights, say- 
ing, " I tell you then, I will; and you shall call me 
child, and so I will be for ever and ever your coun- 
trywoman. They did tell us always you were 
dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth. 
Yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakkin 
[the Indian who came with her] to seek you, and 
know the truth, because your countrymen will lie 
much." 

No more is told of their meeting; but Smith re- 
cords some facts in regard to Uttamatomakkin 
that are amusing, and are often repeated. The 
first is his attempt to keep tally on a stick of the 
number of English — not necessarily, as has been 
pointed out by Katharine Woods in her life of 
Smith, by making a notch for each individual, but 
by some system equally inadequate; for he was 
compelled to report that the English were as the 
sands of the sea in number ; and the second is his 
denial of his being presented to King James, be- 
cause the King gave him nothing. Neither story 
seems very striking or important; for there is no 

15 



244 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

reason for representing the American Indians 
as fools. They certainly stand comparison with 
most of their white contemporaries. 

Pocahontas was liked and admired in England, 
and made much of; but just as she was about to 
set sail for Virginia she died, leaving a son, 
Thomas, whose descendants intermarried with 
several prominent Virginian families, among 
them the Boilings, Randolphs, Flemings, Guys, 
Eldridges, and Murrays. Some trace of her blood 
is still known to have been in men who have be- 
come prominent in American history, of whom 
perhaps the most notable are President Harrison 
and John Randolph of Roanoke. 

But, beyond this brief visit. Captain Smith 
seems to have taken little notice of Pocahontas, 
except to write a letter to Queen Anne, asking her 
favor for the Virginian princess. In this letter 
he recounts the Indian girl's services to the col- 
ony, including her rescue of himself, a statement 
he would certainly not have dared make if he had 
feared contradiction either by Pocahontas herself 
or by any. of his enemies, for Smith had just been 
appointed Admiral, and was expecting to be put 
in command of the fleet of twenty ships from Ply- 
mouth. This was the earliest public account of 
the rescue. 



smith's last enterprise 245 

There is little more to record save a mere list 
of Captain Smith's writings, for he was unsuc- 
cessful in seeking an opportunity to join in the 
building up of New England. When the Pilgrims 
were about to set out, he seems to have offered 
his services to them, for he records that they de- 
clared his books and maps to be cheaper to teach 
them than himself, and adds, " Many others have 
pursued the like good husbandry that have paid 
dearly in trying their self-walled conclusions." 
Perhaps they, like some others, considered him 
" unlucky," a reputation which he shows to be ab- 
surdly untrue by a stirring summary of his career 
in war, slavery, adventure, famine, and captivity 
among savages, to say nothing of his numerous 
escapes at sea. 

He says : '' If you but truly consider how many 
strange accidents have befallen these plantations 
and myself, you cannot but conceive God's infinite 
mercy both to them and to me. Having been a 
slave to the Turks, prisoner among the most bar- 
barous savages. . . and yet to have lived near 
thirty-seven years in the midst of wars, pestilence, 
and famine, by which many a hundred thousand 
have died about me, and scarce five living of them 
that first went with me to Virginia . . . though I 



246 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

have but my labor for my pains, have I not much 
reason pubHcly and privately to acknowledge it 
and to give good thanks ? '' 

Whatever the reason, Smith found no active ca- 
reer open to him, and so took up the pen to record 
his experiences, describe all he had seen, and to 
teach others some of the wisdom he had acquired. 

Consequently we know of him thenceforward 
only by his printed words. Yet by these we may 
judge what manner of man he was, and with what 
his mind was busied. We may also form an opin- 
ion as to his honesty of intention and steadfast- 
ness of purpose. There were many wild specu- 
lations set afloat in those days, and had Captain 
Smith been the braggart and liar some believe him 
to have been, he would not have lacked employ- 
ment long. As he puts it, " Had my designs been 
to have persuaded men to a mine of gold, as I 
know many have done that knew no such matter 
(though few so conceive either the charge or 
pains in refining it nor the power or care to defend 
it) ; or some new invention to pass to the South 
Sea, or some strange plot to invade some strange 
monastery ; or some chargeable fleet to take some 
rich carracks [merchant ships] ; or letters of 
marque to rob some poor merchant or honest fish- 



smith's last enterprise 247 

erman— what multitudes of both people and 
money would contend to be first employed! " 

But John Smith offered only honest service in 
honest employment, and so he was not listened to 
except in times of trouble: as after the massacre 
of the Virginians in 1622, by the contrivance of 
the warlike Opechancanough. Then Captain 
Smith wrote a statement showing how, with little 
more than a regiment of rangers, the colonies 
might be made secure against the Indians, and 
once more proved himself the only man of his time 
who understood Indian warfare. 

In marked contrast to the short-sighted states- 
men of his day. Smith continually declared to the 
merchants that there was more money to be 
earned by fishing than by gold-mining, and a 
greater " India " in New England than beyond 
the South Sea. He also pointed out the possibility 
that an English navy could be created that would 
control the highways of the sea, and thus domi- 
nate the world. In short, he was like a prophet 
who cried aloud the truth in the wilderness, and 
they heard him not, because they had doubts 
about the three slain Turks and Pocahontas ! 

To this period belong his "New England's 
Trials," a description of the trials or tests made of 

16 



248 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

its value as a colony; the " Generall Historic of 
Virginia " ; '' An Accidence for Young Seamen/' 
a book for the instruction of young sailors; his 
own " True Travels " ; and a guide for colonists, 
'' Advertisement for the Inexperienced," the last 
being written for the guidance of Winthrop's ex- 
pedition, and published in 1630. He also meant 
to write a " History of the Sea,'* but there is none 
of it in existence. 

In 1 63 1, on the 21st of June, John Smith died 
in London at the house of Sir Samuel Saltonstall. 

He must have been a disappointed man, but 
there is no sign that he was ever soured by neglect 
and enforced idleness. He did his duty to the best 
of his ability wherever he was placed ; he told un- 
welcome truths to his superiors in office though 
they were his inferiors in brains and in know- 
ledge; he offered his aid to all good enterprises, 
and refused it to all that he considered unworthy; 
and when he was set aside and less worthy men 
were put over him, he still gave the best counsel 
he could devise for the good of his nation and the 
future of his race. 

And as the years go by, John Smith is coming 
to his rightful place in history. His predictions 
have been fulfilled, his policy has been justified. 



SMITH S LAST ENTERPRISE 249 

When he is compared with other men of his 
period, he seems to our modern eyes ahiiost the 
only far-seeing intellect of the time, one of the 
few broad-minded, unselfish statesmen in Eng- 
land, and the least regarded. Fortunately he held 
the magic wand of immortality in his busy pen, 
and yet speaks for himself. 

There is a poem from his pen that seems to me 
most touching. In this he compares himself to a 
wrecked vessel lying upon a shoal or rock as a 
warning to others who may pass that way : 

THE SEA MARK 

Aloof! aloof! — and come not near! 
The dangers do appear, 

Which, if my ruin had not been 
You had not seen : 

I only lie upon this shelf 
To be a mark to all 
Which on the same may fall, 
That none may perish but myself. 

If in or outward you be bound, 
Do not forget to sound ! 

Neglect of that was cause of this 

To steer amiss. 



250 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

The seas were calm, the wind was fair 

That made me so secure 

That now I must endure 
All weathers, be they foul or fair. 

The winter's cold, the summer's heat 
Alternatively beat 

Upon my bruised sides, that rue 
Because too true 

That no relief can ever come. 
But why should I despair. 
Being promised so fair 
That there shall be a day of Doom ? 

If one reads this poem for its true poetic quality, 
rather than in petty criticism of minor matters, it 
will be found to rank very high. These lines are 
prefixed to his last little book, " The Pathway to 
Experience," and though not signed, they so evi- 
dently refer to Smith in allegory that we may 
ascribe them to him. 

But there must be an end, for the main facts of 
his life are now before you for your judgment. I 
have tried to end as I began, without prejudice 
for or against the Governor of Virginia and Ad- 
miral of New England. But it seems to me that 
no one can read thoroughly the body of Smith's 
writings as collected and edited by Edward Arber 



smith's last enterprise 251 

(1884) without feeling that this man has been 
awarded a lower place in history than he has 
earned. 

The old school of historians, who sought above 
all things to make picturesque and striking narra- 
tions, have seriously wronged Captain Smith in 
making so prominent the two petty episodes of the 
Turkish duels and the rescue by the child of an 
Indian chieftain, and thereby neglecting to show, 
or to show in right proportion, the statesman, the 
soldier, the writer, the navigator, the explorer, 
who founded the English race in America, and 
thereby fixed for all time the history of North 
America as a home of the English-speaking race. 
He was less selfish, broader-minded, more patri- 
otic than the Pilgrims ; and in the Virginian col- 
ony Smith established an influence without which 
New England might have remained narrow and 
provincial. 

It was John Smith who taught all colonists the 
strength of independence. To this brave, patient, 
resourceful, honest English gentleman and sol- 
dier it is easy to trace back the influences that a 
century and a half later set ringing the bell to 
" proclaim liberty to all the land, and the inhabi- 
tants thereof." 



252 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

The United States of America owe more to him 
and to his words than they have yet recognized, 
and, though his place in history is secure, the na- 
tion which is the fulfilment of his dream owes 
him a monument among those of its founders. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



^copolis. ']'7 

Adrianople, 67 

Africa, 79 

America in 1600. 25 

Apocant. 132, 133, 138 

Appalachian Mts., 104 

Appomattox, 160, 205 ; Queen 
of, 156, 174 

Arahatec, chieftain, 104, 106, 
108 

Arber, Edwin, editor, 113, 147, 
148, 158, 250 

Archer, 128, 148, 168, 171 ; de- 
parts, 181; returns, 219; 222 

Argall, Capt., 218; captures 
Pocahontas, 226 

Armada, the, 5 

Axopolis, 67 

Barty, Peregrine, 11, 28 

" Beginners of a Nation " (Eg- 
gleston), quoted, 86 

Bermudas, 219, 223, 226 

Bogall, buys Smith, 67; his 
lies, 69 

Bonny Mulgro, Turkish cham- 
pion, 51 

boyhood of Smith, 8 

Brittany visited, 20 

Budapest, 41 

Busca, 60 

Callamata, Lady, ']'7 
Gambia, 71. 72 
Canary Isles, 91, 127 



Capahowosick, 166 

Cape Ann. 67 

Cape Comfort, 102 

Cape Henry, 96 

Captain Smith appointed, 34 

carralue, a coin, 20 

Castragan, a road, ^y 

Chesapeake Bay, 93, 186 

Chickahominy Indians, 125, 

216, 227 
Chickahominy River, 124, 130, 

132. 199 
coat-of-arms. Smith's, 52, 54, 

57 . 
conspiracy, Kendall and 

Wingfield, 127 
Constantinople, 67 
Council, members of First, 97 
councilors, summary of their 

value, 129 
crosses, set up, 108, 193 
Curzianvere, Smith's friend, 20 
Cuskarawack Indians, 187 

Donne, the poet, quoted, 131 
" dragons " made by Smith, Z7 
Drake, Sir Francis, 88 
Dutch colonists, traitorous, 

195, 207, 208, 210, 213, 214, 

218 

East India Company, 25 
Ebersbaught, Lord, 29 
Eggleston, Edw., quoted, 86, 
140 



255 



256 



INDEX 



elephants, Smith describes, 80 
Emery, colonist, 133, 138, 168, 

199 
England in Smith's time, 5, 6, 

7, 87, 88 
Epenow, an Indian, 232 

Famine in Jamestown (see 
"Starving Time"), 113, 
130, 217 

" fine writing," 54, 59 

France, Smith in, 19 

" Generall Historic of Vir- 
ginia," 139, 143, 157, 164, 
210 

gold-mining, 173, 180, 182, 189, 
194, 228, 232, 246 

Gosnold, Barth., 89, 96, 116, 
127, 129 

Gran, 41 

Gratz (Styria), 28 

Grualgo, Turkish champion, 49 

Henry of Navarre, 13 
hermit. Smith as a, 16 
Hudson, Henry, 186 
Hume, David, 12, 15 
Hungary, Smith in, 36 
Hunt, Capt., kidnaps Indians, 

231 
Hunt, Robert, clergyman, 91, 

III, 172 

India, sea-route to, see " Pa- 
cific " 

Indians, attacks by, 96, 109, 
183, 215 ; kidnapping of, 231 ; 
houses, 99, 105 ; superstition 
about names, 106 ; peace with, 
hi; their idol " Okee," 119; 
bring food, 117; magic, 154; 
adoption of Smith, 154; and 
see names of individuals and 
tribes 

Ireland; was Smith in? 146 

Italy, Smith's visit to, 23, 28 



James River, 102, 104 

Jamestown, 98; loi ; burnt, 172; 
old tower, 211; blockhouse, 
217 ; during famine, 220 

Jeremie, 61, 62 

Kanitza, 29, 42 

Kecoughtan, 102, 118, 190, 191, 

207 
Kendall, 103, 127; shot for 

treason, 128, 129 
Kisell, Baron, 29 

La Roche, Capt., 24, 25 
Leipsic, 79 

literature. Smith's taste in, 16 
London Council, Smith's letter 

to, 200 
London merchants, 239 
Lynn, 10 

Margidunum (Willoughby), 4 
Martin, councilor, 97, 116, 117, 

121, 129, 182, 186, 220, 221 
Massowomeks, Indians, 191, 

193 
Meldritch, Earl of, 29, 2)7^ 39, 

40, 41, 42, 44, 61, 62, 63, 79 
Mercury, Duke of (Mercceur), 

19, 36, 39, 41 
Merham, Capt., cruise with, 81 
meteor seen, 92 
money, worth of, 11 
Monocans, Indians, 163, 179, 

196, 197 

Nalbrits, 70, "j^ 

names, Indian superstition, 106 

names, geographical, given by 

Prince Charles, 231 
Namontack, Indian hostage, 

177, 196 
Nansemond, 220 
Nelson, Capt., 170, 182 
Netherlands, Smith in the, 14, 

17, 19 
Newport, Capt., 92, 96, 102, 103, 
105, 107, 110; sails for Eng- 



INDEX 



257 



land, in; 127, 129, 155, 163, 
164 ; return of, 168 ; 173, 174 ; 
as trader, 177, 179; 182, 194, 
195, 196; disciplined, 200, 204, 
210 

Nice, Smith at, 23 
Non-such, 221 
Nuremberg, 41 

Olumpagh (Ober Limbach), 29 
Oropaks, Indians, 150, 151 
"Oxford Tract." 126 
Opechancanough, chief of Pa- 

munkeys, 108, 137, 138, 139, 

148, 208, 247 

Pacific (sea-route to India), 87, 
107. 131, 132, 180, 195, 197, 
198, 218, 246, 247 

Pamunkey Indians, see Ope- 
chancanough 

Pamunkey River, 115 

Paspaheghs, Indians, 122, 125, 
151, 215 

Patapsco River, 191 

Percy, George, portrait, 93 ; 95, 
Id, 102, 114, 194, 222 

Peregrine, Mount, 193 

Phoenix, ship, 170, 181, 182, 185, 
186 

Ployer, Earl of, 22 

Plymouth merchants, 232, 239 

Pocahontas, 157, 158, 159; res- 
cue of Smith, 164; 170; vis- 
its colony, 184 ; festival given 
by, 196 ; warns English, 207 ; 
209, 226 ; marries Rolfe, 227 ; 
visits England, 240; portrait, 
241 ; descendants, 244 

Polish colonists, 195 

Potomac River, 189 

Powhatan, 106, 115; Smith be- 
fore, 155, 158, 159, 160, 166, 
167, 173, 175, 182; crowning 
of, 195, 197; Smith's visit, 
206, 207, 208, 214, 218, 227 



"Powhatan," the false, 105, 115 
Powhatan (town), 105, 106, 121 
" Proceedings of First Plant- 
ers," 167 

quarrels of colonists, 93, 97 

Raleigh, Sir W., 88 
Rappahannocks, Indians, 193 
Ratcliffe, councilor, 96, 116,117, 
121,127,129, 148, 190, 191 ; im- 
prisoned, 194; released, 195; 
204, 219, 222 ; death, 226 
Rawhunt, Indian, 159, 167, 184 
Regall, 44. 45, 47, 56 
Richmond, site of, 107, 163 
Roanoke colony, 88, 194, 218 
robber. Smith fights French, 22 
Robinson, colonist, 133, 138, 

168, 199 
Roche, La, Capt., 24, 25 
Rodoll, Lord, 61 
Rolfe, John, 227 
Rouen. 13 
Russell, Dr., 190 

St. Mary. Isle, 23 

Safi, 81 

Salvage, Thomas (a boy), 177, 
180 

Sassafras River, 191 

schooling, Smith's, 3 

Scotland, 14 

Scrivener, councilor, 171, 179, 
181, 190. 191. 194, 199, 209 

" Sea Mark. The," poem, by 
John Smith, 249 

Sea Venture, ship, wrecked, 219 
219 

Sendall, Thomas, Smith's mas- 
ter, 10 

sergeant-major. Smith made, 

settlers, the Virginia, no 
ships, Newport's, 90 
Sigismund, Prince, 42, 58, 79 
signaling by torches, 29 



258 



INDEX 



Simms, William G., quoted, 

131 
slavery among Turks, 74 
Smith, George, father of John, 

9 

Smith, John (Captain), birth, 3 ; 
ancestry, 4 ; wish to go to 
sea, 9; to France, 11 ; in Or- 
leans, 12; soldier, 13; in 
Netherlands, 14 ; second visit, 
17, 19; a hermit, 16; his 
books, 16 ; robbed on voyage 
to France, 19 ; destitute in 
Normandy, 21 ; thrown into 
sea, 23 ; cruise with La 
Roche, 25 ; in Italy, 23, 28 ; at 
Vienna, 29 ; signaling device, 
29, 30 ; his stratagem, SS '■> be- 
comes captain, 34 ; wounded, 
40; in Transylvania, 41, 42; 
fights three Turks, 46 ; 
wounded, captured, enslaved, 
64, 67. 73 ; escapes, 76 ; to 
Europe, 78 ; Spain, 79 ; 
Africa, 80 ; cruise with Mer- 
ham. 80 ; fights Spaniards, 
82 ; returns to England, 85 

To Virginia, 90 ; gallows 
built for him, 95 ; councilor, 
96 ; excluded, 97 ; explores 
James River, 104 ; demands 
trial, III; justified. iii ; man- 
ages affairs at Jamestown, 
117; trading with Indians, 
118; sick, 121; to Powhatan 
(town), 122; saves colony, 
129 ; explores Chickahominy 
and is captured, 138; "ex- 
plains " solar system to Indi,- 
ans. 142 ; was he ever in Ire- 
land? 146; attacked by an 
old Indian, 152; before Pow- 
hatan, 156; rescue by Poca- 
hontas, 164 ; adopted into 
tribe (?), 166; return to 
Jamestown, 168 
Expedition to Powhatan, 



173; made a chief, 175; 
Smith as a trader, 178; re- 
stores the colony, 181 ; sub- 
dues Indians, 183 ; explores 
Chesapeake Bay, 186 ; stung 
by sting-ray, 190; resumes 
exploration, 192 ; returns to 
Jamestown, 194 

Elected President, 194 ; his 
cure for profanity, 138; dis- 
ciplines Newport, 200 ; his 
letter to London Council, 
200 ; visits Powhatan and is 
again saved by Pocahontas, 
207 ; conflict with Opechanca- 
nough, 209 ; escapes poison- 
ing, 210; return to James- 
town, 213 ; his regulations for 
colony, 214; fights Paspa- 
hegh chief, 215 ; revives 
"dead" Indian, 216; ham- 
pered by new council, 220 ; 
saves outlying colonies, 221 ; 
blown up by gunpowder, 
222 ; returns to England, 222 

In England, 225, 227 ; an 
author, 227 ; sails to New 
England. 228; new projects, 
232; second expedition to New 
England, 233 ; meets pirates, 
233, 234 ; captured by French, 
235 ; escapes, 237 ; " Admiral 
of New England," 239 

Meets Pocahontas in Eng- 
land, 240; writes about her 
to Queen Anne, 244 ; the Pil- 
grims reject his services, 245 ; 
Smith held " unlucky," 245 ; 
his views on America, 247; 
his later writings, 247 ; death, 
248 

His poem, " The Sea 
Mark." 249 

Summary of character, 251 

His veracity, 71, 80, 85, 86, 
139, 140, 151, 159, 165, 
176, 197, 234, 246 



INDEX 



259 



Smith's Isles, 186 
Spaniards, fighting, 82 
" Starving Time," 223 
Sting-ray Isle. 190, 191 
stratagem, Smith's, 33 
Stuhhveissenburg. 36, 38, 40 
Susan Constant, Newport's 

ship. 89. 200 
Susquehanna River, 191 
Susquehannocks, Indians, 192 
Szegedin (Zigetun), 41 

Tatars, 64. 65, 78 

Tattersall, 17 

tilting, practise at, 17; Smith's 

skill, 53 
tobacco, 88 

Tockwoghes, Indians, 192 
"To Have and to Hold" (on 

Indian uprising), 149 
Toppahannock Indians, 122 
Transylvania, 41, 58, 60; Prince 

of, 42 
"True Relation, A." 139, 157, 

158, 164, 166, 186 
Tragabigzanda, Princess, 67, 

69. 70 
" tuftataffaty," 131 
Turbashaw, 37 

Turkish champions fought, 47 
Turks, campaigns against, 18, 

34, 37, 43, 45, 55, 61 ; their 

treatment of captives, 74 ; 

slavery among, 74 



Uttamatomakkin, Pocahontas's 
companion, 243 



Varna, 71 

Venetian ship taken, 27 

Virginia, families from Poca- 
hontas, 244 ; massacre of, 
1622,247; Smith sails for, 90; 
arrival, 97; map of. Smith's, 
229, 231 ; see " Generall His- 
toric of " ; colonizing, causes 
of, 86, 87; charter, 89; voy- 
age to, 91 ; Council, first, 97 



Wallachia, 61 

Warraskoyacks, Indians, 120 
Weramocomoco, 155, 173 
Willoughby (town), 3; Lord, 

see Barty ; River, 193 
Wingfield, Edw., councilor, 89, 
96, 103, 109, no; property 
seized, in; removed from 
presidency, 115; imprisoned, 
116; conspires, 127, 128. 129; 
his statements about Smith, 
146. 148 ; departs, 181 
Woods, Katharine Pearson, 
quoted, 143, 243 



Zarkam, Land of, 44, 45 
Zigetun (Szegedin), 41 



I 



SEP H ly*^ 



